jeethjoseph
commented
8 months ago This issue tracks the course work for Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs Second Edition.
Open jeethjoseph opened 8 months ago
jeethjoseph
commented
8 months ago This issue tracks the course work for Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs Second Edition.
jeethjoseph
commented
8 months ago Link for a repo which attempts to document and preserve most of the Brian Harvey Lectures. https://github.com/theurere/berkeley_cs61a_spring-2011_archive?tab=readme-ov-file
jeethjoseph
commented
8 months ago
Readme
Most undergraduate CS programs start with an “introduction” to computer programming. The best versions of these courses cater not just to novices, but also to those who missed beneficial concepts and programming models while first learning to code.
Our standard recommendation for this content is the classic Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, which is available online for free both as a book, and as a set of MIT video lectures. While those lectures are great, our video suggestion is actually Brian Harvey’s SICP lectures (for the 61A course at Berkeley) instead. These are more refined and better targeted at new students than are the MIT lectures.
We recommend working through at least the first three chapters of SICP and doing the exercises. For additional practice, work through a set of small programming problems like those on exercism.
Since this guide was first published in 2016, one of the most commonly asked questions has been whether we’d now recommend recordings of a more recent iteration of 61A taught by John DeNero, and/or the corresponding book Composing Programs, which is “in the tradition of SICP” but uses Python. We think the DeNero resources are also great, and some students may end up preferring them, but we still suggest SICP, Scheme, and Brian Harvey’s lectures as the first set of resources to try.
Why? Because SICP is unique in its ability—at least potentially—to alter your fundamental beliefs about computers and programming. Not everybody will experience this. Some will hate the book, others won't get past the first few pages. But the potential reward makes it worth trying.
If you don't enjoy SICP, try Composing Programs. If that still doesn't suit, try How to Design Programs. If none of these seem to be rewarding your effort, perhaps that's a sign that you should focus on other topics for some time, and revisit the discipline of programming in another year or two.
Finally, a point of clarification: this guide is NOT designed for those who are entirely new to programming. We assume that you are a competent programmer without a background in computer science, looking to fill in some knowledge gaps. The fact that we've included a section on "programming" is simply a reminder that there may be more to learn. For those who've never coded before, but who'd like to, you might prefer a guide like this one.