 Cover of the second edition | |
| Author | Harold Abelson,Gerald Jay Sussman, Julie Sussman |
|---|---|
| Subject | Computer science |
| Genre | Textbook |
| Publisher | MIT Press |
Publication date | 1984 (1st ed.), 1996 (2nd ed.), 2022 (JavaScript ed.) |
| Pages | 657 |
| ISBN | 0-262-51087-1 (2nd ed.) |
| LC Class | QA76.6 .A255 1996 |
| Website | mitpress |
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) is acomputer science textbook byMassachusetts Institute of Technology professorsHarold Abelson andGerald Jay Sussman with Julie Sussman. It is known as the "Wizard Book" inhacker culture.[1] It teaches fundamental principles ofcomputer programming, includingrecursion,abstraction,modularity, andprogramming languagedesign andimplementation.
MIT Press published the first edition in 1984, and the second edition in 1996. It was used as the textbook for MIT's introductory course incomputer science from 1984 to 2007. SICP focuses on discovering generalpatterns for solving specific problems, and buildingsoftware systems that make use of those patterns.[2]
MIT Press published aJavaScript version of the book in 2022.[3]
The book describes computer science concepts usingScheme, a dialect ofLisp. It also uses avirtualregister machine andassembler to implement Lispinterpreters andcompilers.
Topics in the books are:
Several humorously-named fictional characters appear in the book:
The book is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.[4]
The book was used as the textbook for MIT's former introductory programming course, 6.001,[5] from fall 1984 through its last semester, in fall 2007.[6] Other schools also made use of the book as a course textbook.[7]
Byte recommended SICP in 1986 "for professional programmers who are really interested in their profession". The magazine said that the book was not easy to read, but that it would expose experienced programmers to both old and new topics.[8]
A review of SICP as an undergraduate textbook byPhilip Wadler noted the weaknesses of the Scheme language as an introductory language for a computer science course.[9] Wadler criticized in particular the lack ofpattern matching, obscuringequational reasoning and making the teaching of proofs harder; the lack ofalgebraic data types in Scheme and the over-reliance oncons pairs for both code and data representation, which can confuse beginning students; and the choice ofstrict instead oflazy evaluation as the standard evaluation strategy.
SICP has been influential in computer science education, and several later books have been inspired by its style.
I talked to Professor Sussman on the phone... He said that he'd actually been trying to have 6.001 replaced for the last ten years (and I read somewhere that Professor Abelson was behind the move too). Understanding the principles is not essential for an introduction to the subject matter anymore. He sees 6.001 as obsolete.
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