Why SICP Matters

Re:Why SICP Matters by JulianMorrison on Tuesday April 30, 2013 @06:47PM (#5635377)

"woah, this is unlike anything I've seen before." - it so totally isn't, if you know Ruby and to a lesser extent JS, both popular languages. It's a funky syntax coating on a fairly normal dynamic language, with about three quirks (tail calling, homoiconicity, and call/cc) all of which are more of interest academically than practically.

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Re:Why SICP Matters by calinet6 on Tuesday April 30, 2013 @06:56PM (#5635416)

The funky syntax does enough to knock an 18-year-old freshman out of his one-track mind. That's all you need.

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Re:Why SICP Matters by henrikschroder on Wednesday May 01, 2013 @03:29AM (#5636905)

My university also started off the CS programme with Scheme in the mid 90's when I went, and it was a great leveller. Maybe half the kids had been programming a lot before starting uni, and the other half hadn't, and by starting with Scheme, everyone was at the same level, which built a lot of confidence among the ones that hadn't been programming before.

Five years later or so, the great teacher that ran the CS intro course quit, someone else took over, and switched to Java. Typical. :-/

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Re:Why SICP Matters by sixbrx on Wednesday May 01, 2013 @07:04AM (#5637289)

I don't think "quirks" is the right word for tail calling and homoiconicity, and those are powerful features that I miss in practical situations all the time in lesser languages.

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Re:Why SICP Matters by wfunction on Thursday May 02, 2013 @05:53AM (#5643464)

> JS

> a fairly normal dynamic language

You call this a "fairly normal dynamic language"?

0 == '' // true

0 == '0' // true

'' == '0' // false

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