note by Charles Stanhope

Charles Stanhope at 2017-01-02T21:09:02Z

SICP, but with Python: "This book is derived from the classic textbook Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Abelson, Sussman, and Sussman. John Denero originally modified if for Python for the Fall 2011 semester. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license."

I skimmed through it. It succeeds by not being entirely faithful; it's adapted in ways that are much more appropriate to Python. But I think there are a lot of things (of value) which are lost in the transition... even if it does a great job of staying coherent. I guess that's pretty vague, but I think the minimalism of Lisp / Scheme gets you pretty far: the language is so strippe down that it's easy to get to the heart of what computing is.

One of the strongest things in SICP is that you eventually write several implementations of the language inside the language itself, and it looks just like the same language you were working in all along...

Christopher Allan Webber at 2017-01-02T21:25:13Z

Charles Stanhope likes this.

That said, it looks like a nice effort. Some of the diagrams look a lot nicer than the ones in SICP. Good work to the person writing it!

Christopher Allan Webber at 2017-01-02T21:28:42Z

BTW, here's a really nicely formatted version of SICP with much nicer diagrams.

Christopher Allan Webber at 2017-01-02T21:29:13Z

Charles Stanhope likes this.

@cwebber Thanks for the quick review and the link to the nicely formatted version of SICP!

Charles Stanhope at 2017-01-02T22:15:17Z

Christopher Allan Webber likes this.