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Lecture 1A | MIT 6.001 Structure and Interpretation, 1986

MIT OpenCourseWare

6.5M subscribers • 26 videos on Hallway • University channel

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  • Recommended by 11 people: 11 on Hacker News.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2012 to 2024.
  • Presented by Harold Abelson, Professor at MIT

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

995K views17 years ago11 recommendations

Computer scienceProgramming languagesLisp and ClojureFunctional programmingComputation and complexity

Harold Abelson introduces Lisp, computer science as the study of declarative processes, and the concept of black-box abstraction.

Overview and Introduction to Lisp Despite the copyright notice on the screen, this course is now offered under a Creative Commons license: BY-NC-SA. Details at ocw.mit.edu/terms Subtitles for this course are provided through the generous assistance of Henry Baker, Hoofar Pourzand, Heather Wood, Aleksejs Truhans, Steven Edwards, George Menhorn, and Mahendra Kumar.

Why it's here

11 people recommend this, 1 disputes it

What people say. Recommended as a legendary introduction to computer science fundamentals and the power of abstraction.

tincoon Hacker News • Recommends

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: link to this video (it teaches scheme and the lecturer has an awesome way of explaining it)
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r-son Hacker News • Recommends

On “Interactive SICP”

One section of original lectures are freely available via MITs OpenCourseWare youtube channel: link to 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.
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dmixon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Calculus Made Easy (1914) [pdf]”

…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. link to 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 getting into math link ).…
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stuxnet79on Hacker News • Recommends

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 link to this video
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otrason Hacker News • Recommends

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”: link to this video
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dancemethison Hacker News • Recommends

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: link to 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.
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unabston Hacker News • Recommends

On “Why MIT Switched from Scheme to Python (2009)”

…d work. It's already popular on the web server, and is used everywhere else -- unlike Scheme. But the recent resurgence of functional programming is super exciting with Elixir and Elm and the like. I'm looking forward to building my next project using Elixir. Here is the classic course: link Original video lecture on YouTube (linked from above): link to this video…
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lunchladydorison Hacker News • Recommends

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 link to this video
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xyzwaveon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?”

Such a timeless quote. I believe this is the source: link to this video While there, SICP is not a bad way to augment a CS degree :-)
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efortison Hacker News • Recommends

On “Today's CS pedagogy is problematic”

Some Good Parts: - Professor Richard Buckland has CS playlists on youtube (UNSW eLearning). In one of his lectures he starts writing a sudoku solver (I think) starting with high level abstractions. - Also, at least, the first video of SICP link to this video
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hickelpickleon Hacker News • Recommends

On “The world's loudest Lisp program to the rescue”

…ight read the slowly teaches some syntax at a time, questions you about assumptions then revels the information as it goes on. It would be the least dry read. There is also sketchy scheme for a more thorough text, or even the rs7s standard, which are both pretty dry but short. What made me appreciate scheme was watching some of the SICP lectures ( link to this video ) and the little schemer to learn more. I also read some of the SICP along with it, though I put it down due to not having the time to work through it. Scheme is interesting and toying with recursion is fun, but the path a mentioned above is only really enjoyable if you are looking to toy around with CS concepts and recursion. You can do a…
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userbinatoron Hacker News • Disputes

On “8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1”

I think the underlying cause of this over abstraction is largely a result of abstraction being excessively glorified (mostly) by academics and formal CS curricula. In some ways, it's similar to the OOP overuse that has thankfully decreased somewhat recently but was extremely prevalent throughout the 90s. In software engineering, we're constantly subjected to messages like: Abstraction is good. Abstraction is powerful. Abstraction is the way to solve problems. More abstraction is better. Even in the famously acclaimed SICP lecture series 1 there is this quote: "So in that sense computer science is like an abstract form of engineering. It's the kind of engineering where you ignore the constr…
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sepethon Hacker News • Mentions

On “The 'No True Programmer' Fallacy”

> Note that you can be a programmer without ever having touched a computer, people have been coming up with algorithms and integrating them into systems for ages. Slightly different, but the first episode of SICP videos helped me to reach the same conclusion: link to this video We can even say Newton, or Euclid wrote programs. Maybe not by sitting in front of a computer, but they described a process to calculate something.
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keithnzon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Beautiful Online SICP”

you all with your fancy pants "reading". Nothing beats the movie, not only showing the height of computing power, but the awesome fashion of uber geeks. link to this video
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shaknaon Hacker News • Mentions

On “What programming languages do you know and which ones do you want to learn?”

> Interesting. Maybe we should compare notes sometimes. I have a bit of a story with finding alternative-type stuff. I really like the theory of programming, and am constantly looking for languages that are a) easier to write b) amazingly expressive Its always finding what's out there. > - I've been contemplating tackling Python, in spite of the 2.x/3.x thing. There's the perfect vacuum where versioning shouldn't be a problem, and the practical real world where knowing Python and the differences between the two will let me actually do interesting things. Thankfully, that's mostly gone now. Few enterprises still holding out, but most of the big libraries are 2/3 or 3 only. And 3 is a lot more…
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Nadyaon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Blogger discredits claim Amelia Earhart was taken prisoner by Japan”

The quote is of Hal Abelson and one of his lectures at MIT disagrees with you 1. The introduction is amusing and opens with Computer Science has nothing to do with Computers and little to do with Science. It's really a poorly named field. I believe it's a bit tongue in cheek and not defining science entirely by "uses the scientific method". 0 link 1 link to this video
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