Lecture 1A | MIT 6.001 Structure and Interpretation, 1986

What Hacker News said

Strong rec tinco · 2012-12 · on “Zuckerberg visits Stanford CS106A third year in a row”

Heh that's interesting, I just watched 106A yesterday to get an idea of how the programming introduction course is compared to my university (utwente.nl). I actually was a bit disappointed to see that it is very much like our introduction course, except that this teacher is a bit more enthousiastic, and perhaps the course starts at an even more basic level I think. I think for real CS enthousiasts 6.001 at MIT is much more interesting (and fun) to watch: [this video] (it teaches scheme and the lecturer has an awesome way of explaining it)

Strong rec r-s · 2014-07 · on “Interactive SICP”

One section of original lectures are freely available via MITs OpenCourseWare youtube channel: [this video] It would be quite difficult to beat these lectures, while they appear a bit dated, the content is great. SICP is a great way to learn about programming, although I am very surprised they got through the whole book in an introductory course. Chapters 4 and 5 cover some topics I was barely aware of nearing the end of my formal CS education.

Strong rec dmix · 2017-04 · on “Calculus Made Easy (1914) [pdf]”

Reminds me of the MIT SICP lecture videos from the 80s. The concepts of black box abstraction and the simplicity of using LISP like lego building blocks blew my mind and made me switch from being a UX designer dabbling in Rails to a full blown programmer. It was still entirely relevant to today even though it was a few decades old as the fundamentals of computer science are still fundamental. [this video] Hearing that intro music still brings a smile to my face. I just happen to be relearning math right now as I dive deeper into data science and this is perfect timing. Going to watch this series once I get through my math proofs book ("Book of Proof" by Richard Hammack which I recommend to people

Strong rec stuxnet79 · 2018-03 · on “Ask HN: What's an (article|book|vid) that changed the way you view programming?”

First 10 mins of the first Structure and Interpretation lecture (by Harold Abelson) [1] Famous first words ... "I'd like to welcome you to this course on computer science. Actually, that's a terrible way to start. Computer science is a terrible name for this business." ... and this is where it all clicked to me .... "Well, similarly, I think in the future people will look back and say, yes, those primitives in the 20th century were fiddling around with these gadgets called computers, but really what they were doing is starting to learn how to formalize intuitions about process " [1] [this video]

Strong rec otras · 2018-10 · on “Ask HN: What are some old talks (10+ y) that are still relevant to watch today?”

The Mother Of All Demos is an absolute classic: [LINK] [LINK] I also very much enjoy Feynman’s talks. Here’s one on imagining physics: [LINK] For computer science in particular, I highly recommend the first lecture in the SICP series, especially on the naming of so called “computer science”: [this video]

Strong rec dancemethis · 2021-05 · on ““Computer science is not about computers””

Wow, what a MASSIVE missed opportunity to quote the best variation of this idea by far, done by Hal Abelson in the legendary "6001-Introduction to Computer Science" class on MIT in the 80s. You can check it here: [this video] Abelson in the first minute crosses both computer AND science, and references the also legendary SICP with "computer so-called science actually has a lot in common with magic". Honestly, this alone already made the article that empty.

Recommends unabst · 2017-04 · on “Why MIT Switched from Scheme to Python (2009)”

I took 6.001 in 1999 (I think). Hal Abelson taught it along with a professor who took off his sweatshirt to reveal a Microsoft tee at his final lecture (he went to Microsoft). What was great about Scheme (Lisp) is that most programs are basically words from your vocabulary, parentheses, and cars and cdrs. With procedural languages, there is always a sense that the language provides all the tools, and the magic happens somewhere underneath the hood. But with Scheme it feels as if it's happening right before you. It makes you feel like a wizard, and not a monkey. And it requires knowing all the spells. It requires knowing how to make magic happen. Or not. Once you know none of it's magic. But

Recommends lunchladydoris · 2018-10 · on “Not Lisp again (2009)”

For anyone who wants to feel what this might have felt like (and you've yet to watch them), MIT posted videos of Abelson and Sussman presenting the course on YouTube [0]. I felt a similar sense of magic the first time I saw the derivative section. [0] [this video]