Spring Semester 2006: January 30, 2006 - May 5, 2006
Description: A voluntary weekly workshop discussing the classic MIT course 6.001: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. You are expected to watch one of the equally classic video lectures each week, read the corresponding sections of the book, and then show up for the discussion. Doing some related hacking each week is highly recommended as well.
Prerequisite(s): Open to all interested parties. Undergraduates should probably have passed 600.107: Introduction to Programming in Java or 600.109: Introduction to Programming in C/C++. However, some would contend that having no clue about programming whatsoever is an even better preparation...
Moderator:
Peter H. Fröhlich
Office Hours:
Please
email
me for an appointment.
Meetings:
Wednesday, 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Location:
317
New Engineering Building
Video Lectures:
Tuesday, 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Location:
317
New Engineering Building
Thanks:
Antonello Cruz has volunteered for running these... :-)
Mailing List: sicp@bloat.org (open discussion, but you must subscribe here first)
The schedule is of course tentative, we can expand/reduce coverage of certain topics as we go depending on what we're interested in. It's not even mandatory that we get through the whole course, but I guess it would be nice? :-)
The last meeting is purely optional, but I hope that we'll like each other enough to have dinner and a few drinks anyway. As usual I am open to suggestions for a venue.
The "required" text for this workshop is the classic "Wizard Book" by Abelson and Sussman. How else are we going to study this stuff if not from the word of the original prophets? :-) The book should be required reading for all computer scientists anyway, so why not buy it now?
Note the link to the online version, you don't have to buy this thing, you can read it for free as well. That said, I treasure my hardcopy quite a bit, and you will treasure yours as well... There are plenty of other good books on related subjects such as Scheme, programming languages, and functional programming. Here are some suggestions:
Obviously this is a biased sample. If you think that I am missing some important book here, please feel free to email your suggestions!
I am still collecting links related to the material we will cover, feel free to email your suggestions!