{"id":10270,"date":"2022-01-21T13:39:26","date_gmt":"2022-01-21T18:39:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=10270"},"modified":"2022-01-21T13:39:26","modified_gmt":"2022-01-21T18:39:26","slug":"red-meat-friday-sicp-in-javascript","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=10270","title":{"rendered":"Red Meat Friday: SICP in JavaScript"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Remember a couple of weeks ago when I declared <a href=\"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=10238\">No. Just no<\/a>? Well, here\u2019s another, even more emphatic, refusal to accept the apocalypse.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/lisp\/comments\/s39cqp\/sacrilege_sicp_in_javascript\/\">No. Just HELL no<\/a>!<\/p>\n<p>The thing about SICP is how simple and beautiful the code is and how precisely it demonstrates the concepts under discussion. To pretend that you could do the same with JavaScript is self delusion of the first order.<\/p>\n<p>Yeah yeah, I know. There\u2019s more code written in JavaScript than there are atoms in the universe. There are also more Ford Focuses than Rolls Royces. That doesn\u2019t make  Focus the better car or JavaScript the better language. More to the point, JavaScript is a bad fit for SICP.<\/p>\n<p>I have long abhorred MIT\u2019s decision to replace SICP with Lego robots or something but this latest outrage is an act of vandalism. If you want to learn the wisdom in SICP then learn Scheme. The whiners notwithstanding, it\u2019s an easy language to learn. Indeed, 6.001, the MIT course in which SICP was used, didn\u2019t have any time devoted to teaching Scheme. Students just picked it up as they went along.<\/p>\n<p>If we\u2019re going to abandon SICP as a teaching vehicle, we should at least let it rest in peace and not desecrate its corpse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Remember a couple of weeks ago when I declared No. Just no? Well, here\u2019s another, even more emphatic, refusal to accept the apocalypse. No. Just HELL no! The thing about SICP is how simple and beautiful the code is and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=10270\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[208],"class_list":["post-10270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-rmf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10270"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10271,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10270\/revisions\/10271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}