Code From Mit's 1986 Sicp Video Lectures

Posted3 months agoActive2 months ago

felipap

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24 comments

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SicpMitSchemeLispComputer Science Education

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Sicp

Mit

Scheme

Lisp

Computer Science Education

The post shares a GitHub repository containing code from MIT's 1986 SICP video lectures, sparking nostalgia and discussion among commenters about the course's impact and relevance.

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Discussion (24 comments)

Showing 24 comments

aesbetic

2 months ago

3 replies

In the first lecture, Abelson says Computer Science is neither a science nor is it really about computers. Considering the current ML paradigm, maybe CS has finally earned its name as a science.

bmitc

2 months ago

2 replies

What about the current ML paradigm makes it a science?

computerfriend

2 months ago

1 reply

Observing and testing phenomena we don't understand.

mcmoor

2 months ago

I guess it's been progressing from being math, to natural science, to social science

aesbetic

2 months ago

1 reply

We have “laws” and routinely conduct “experiments” which are kind of unheard of in CS.

bmitc

2 months ago

Do you have any references I could learn about these types of laws and experiments?

gjvc

2 months ago

quite the opposite

postexitus

2 months ago

It is one of the most memorable first lectures in the history of Computer Science.

xdavidliu

2 months ago

3 replies

i watched the lecture series during the pandemic and commented on many of the youtube videos. in at least one instance, a library function is used on the board that is not compatible with the current function signature in mit scheme.

ted_dunning

2 months ago

1 reply

Oh no.

I suppose it is something to do with the fact that it has been, what, almost 40 years since the lectures?

The fact that most of the code would still work is a miracle. That wouldn't work for, say, Java (which didn't exist in 1986). Nor C++. Nor Javascript (also not there back then). Fortran and C might be able to pull it off (but barely).

Remember, we didn't have computers worth the name back then. Shoot, we didn't even have dirt yet, just rocks.

millerm

2 months ago

> That wouldn't work for, say, Java

The ~29 years deprecated java.util.Date* methods would like to have a word. ;-)

*https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/25/docs/api/java.base...

jgwil2

2 months ago

Use the racket #sicp language: https://docs.racket-lang.org/sicp-manual/SICP_Language.html

shawn_w

2 months ago

Which function?

725686

2 months ago

2 replies

If you are into SICP, you would probably like a nicely formatted html version of the book:

https://sarabander.github.io/sicp/html/index.xhtml#SEC_Conte...

And also this:

https://eli.thegreenplace.net/tag/sicp

cipherself

2 months ago

Moreover, you can have SICP inside emacs by just downloading a package from Melpa:

https://melpa.org/#/sicp

lioeters

2 months ago

The nicely formatted SICP is also available in downloadable formats.

EPUB - https://github.com/sarabander/sicp-epub/blob/master/sicp.epu...

PDF - https://github.com/sarabander/sicp-pdf/raw/master/sicp.pdf

carverauto

2 months ago

2 replies

would be better if you could just use AI to re-do those particular scenes in the video series..

lgas

2 months ago

why can't you?

so-cal-schemer

2 months ago

I'd been hoping to do just this, but don't quite have the resources.

matheusmoreira

2 months ago

1 reply

There's also this interesting study about the difficulty and time requirement of SICP's exercises:

https://lockywolf.wordpress.com/2021/02/08/solving-sicp/

The math stuff is brutal.

Jtsummers

2 months ago

Take that writeup with a massive grain of salt. The author claims they spent 459 minutes on exercise 1.1, that exercise is this:

> Exercise 1.1: Below is a sequence of expressions. What is the result printed by the interpreter in response to each expression? Assume that the sequence is to be evaluated in the order in which it is presented.

There are then 12 simple expressions to evaluate. That is, it took them nearly 40 minutes for each expression.

Exercise 2.46 took them 535 minutes to implement. It wasn't even complex math, they needed to create a 2d-vector data type (their choice on implementation details) with a constructor, accessors, addition, subtraction, and scaling. That should not have taken 9 hours to complete (not by that point in the book at least).

hnarayanan

2 months ago

This is such a fun class!

vismit2000

2 months ago

Most of the code from the book is also available here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13918465

tmtvl

2 months ago

The SICP video lectures with Gerald Sussman and Harold Abelson got me into Scheme and from there on Lisp. Although now I'm wondering if this would be better as a 'Show HN' submission.

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