Many of you know that I consider Abelson’s & Sussman’s Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) one of the best Computer Science books ever written. Although I read it late in my career, it opened my eyes to a new way of looking at things and I learned a huge amount from it. It’s one of those books that everyone working in programming absolutely must read.
Over at Corecursive, Adam Gordon Bell has a really interesting podcast interview with Hal Abelson. In addition to being an MIT Professor and one of the authors of SICP, Abelson also cofounded the FSF and was a founding director Creative Commons. He’s an interesting guy with a lot to say.
Much of the interview was concerned with the point of view of SICP and what Abelson and Sussman were trying to accomplish by writing it. In a way, the book has been a victim of its foresight and success. These days, the notion of abstraction and how to accomplish it with programming languages are accepted dogma and SICP can seem like old hat. Back when SICP was being written, though, it was new way of thinking about and teaching programming. Abelson also notes that one of the main lessons in the book is that writing a program to solve a problem is best thought of as designing a language to solve the problem. That way you avoid the problem of writing a program that provides too narrow a solution. Abelson spends some time on this idea and it’s definitely worth paying attention to.
This is a great interview with a lot interesting history and insight. It’s just short of 56 and a half minutes so you’ll have to plan ahead but it’s well worth your time.