Schemers

HacDC is hosting a biweekly study group dedicated to mastering the fabled computer science text, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, by Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman, with Julie Sussman. This text is now available for free under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. We began in May, 2012 and plan to continue this session until we finish the book.

Logistics

Anyone is welcome to attend, normally the meetings are held in person at the HacDC space, in the classroom area, although if that is booked, we may meet in the sanctuary.

Meetup Group

We keep the master calendar on the HacDC meetup calendar. Please RSVP If you plan to attend a session.

Mailing List

Students are encouraged to join the SICP mailing list where class discussions take place between study groups.

Text

SICP comes in both print and electronic editons. Amazon sells a new softcover print editon for about $33. The free online HTML text from MIT is the most complete and functional electronic version, but there's an epub version (download) suitable for ebook readers (Kindle, iPad, etc) available also.

Tools

Any fully functioning Scheme interpreter will work. Most people in the class are using DrRacket due to its excellent interactive debugger and friendly beginner environment.

Get this software installed to make your life easy:

• DrRacket IDE
• SICP language module for DrRacket

It's also possible to use these tools:

• MIT Scheme, the environment the text recommends.
• GNU Guile (built into most Linux distributions, try "sudo apt-get guile" or "sudo yum install guile")
• Lisping, a radical new iPad Scheme and Clojure programming environment

Exercise Solutions

Several study group members are posting their solutions online:

• Ben's solutions, including some JavaScript and Python solutions
• Bjorn's solutions
• Richard's solutions

Resources

• Bill the Lizard has exercise solutions and ruminations on SICP that started with this 2009 blog entry
• MIT OpenCourseWare SICP class with video lectures
• RECURSIVE FUNCTIONS OF SYMBOLIC EXPRESSIONS AND THEIR COMPUTATION BY MACHINE The paper that started it all, describing the theory behind LISP.
• A Tutorial Introduction to the Lambda Calculus by Ra�ul Rojas