SICP: o fim de uma era on HackerTube: recommended by 2 Hacker News commenters across 2 separate months, 2023–2025.
talk · evergreen
A short Portuguese-language excerpt of Gerald Sussman's 2016 NYC Lisp Meetup talk explaining why MIT replaced the Scheme-based 6.001 (SICP) course with Python courses. The full talk is linked in the description.
HN uses it as the canonical explanation from Sussman himself of why SICP ended at MIT.
“we can't mention SICP without referencing this (relatively recent) video”
6 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
Also... HtDP (How to Design Programs) is a good follow-on to SICP. Oh... and I think we can't mention SICP without referencing this (relatively recent) video about why MIT moved from Scheme to Python for intro classes: ▶ this video
in “Why Fennel?” · View on HN
Don't miss Sussman's talk linked from the post: ▶ this video This stuff resonates with me deeply. The reality of the modern computing world is a clusterfuck that no single person understands, especially because, like Sussman said, parts are entirely secret/proprietary anyway. Therefore I think an engineer should be skilled in a) removing the unnecessary bits of that clusterfuck that are not necessary to their problem and b) getting stuff done without having a complete understanding of the whole system. (b) sounds scary as fuck, but I think that's the (sad?) reality we live in in the software and hardware world. Embrace the cluster; embrace the fuck.
in “Sussman Explains the End of SICP” · View on HN
In a sense this has been true of conventional programs for a while now. Gerald Sussman discusses the idea when talking about why MIT switched their introductory programming course from Scheme to Python: < ▶ this video >.
in “Tracing the thoughts of a large language model” · View on HN
Not necessarily as relevant, programming has changed a lot since SICP came out. Sussman says so himself - ▶ this video
in “Ask HN: Is SICP/HtDP still worth reading in 2023? Any alternatives?” · View on HN
Related, Gerald Jay Sussman explains why they pulled the plug on MIT 6001 (SICP) here: ▶ this video To me, part of the problem is that devs continuously change tech stacks without poking at the layers underneath. So only a few become proficient enough to focus on the abstractions. Similarly, now many designers are not more than technicians of graphic design tools.
in “Programming Isn’t Coding” · View on HN
My understanding is that the authors of SICP themselves wanted to update the curriculum - not just a language change, but to cover something at a higher level of abstraction. See: ▶ this video
in “Learn Lisp the Hard Way” · View on HN