From ... From: Erik Naggum Subject: Re: Lisp & SICP Date: 2000/05/15 Message-ID: <3167368221170571@naggum.no>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 623530014 References: <391E9C25.94F5C377@uniserve.com> mail-copies-to: never Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@eunet.no X-Trace: oslo-nntp.eunet.no 958380147 14528 195.0.192.66 (15 May 2000 08:42:27 GMT) Organization: Naggum Software; vox: +47 8800 8879; fax: +47 8800 8601; http://www.naggum.no User-Agent: Gnus/5.0803 (Gnus v5.8.3) Emacs/20.6 Mime-Version: 1.0 NNTP-Posting-Date: 15 May 2000 08:42:27 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp * Shelly Somerville | I often read that SICP is a 'must' for a programmer's reading list. | Question: If one is to undertake studying SICP is it best to use | Scheme or translate the exercises to Lisp, given that I know little | of Scheme. You'll learn Scheme from the book. It is best to do the exercises in Scheme and go with the flow of the book rather than try to map it to a real Lisp. The concepts are very well taught within the Scheme framework, but they must be reapplied in the Common Lisp framework. In my opinion, the book is a must because it does such a good job of teaching its concepts in its own well-established context, but the choice of Scheme is a very serious drawback to applying some of the concepts to non-Scheme contexts, such as the real world. The same argument applies to Donald Knuth: The Art of Computer Programming and its choice of the MIX assembler, which it is also a mistake to translate into different languages while reading. #:Erik -- If this is not what you expected, please alter your expectations.