Subject: Re: Lisp & SICP From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 2000/05/15 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3167368221170571@naggum.no> * Shelly Somerville <somerville@uniserve.com> | 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.