Elektrine lite

← Feed

@rowb1t@social.xenofem.me

Post #2342889

2026-05-08 03:34 UTC

I think that it’s extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don’t think we are. I think we’re responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all, I hope we don’t become missionaries. Don’t feel as if you’re Bible salesmen. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn. Don’t feel as if the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What’s in your hands, I think and hope, is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you can make it more. -- Alan J. Perlis starting next tuesday (5/12) at 8pm PDT we will be starting our lecture series covering SICP (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs), a classic textbook of computer science. all are welcome to join in -- despite its stature SICP is intended as a text for new programmers. regardless of whether you have any interest in the Scheme programming language or functional programming broadly i believe you will find something worthwhile in this series. every tuesday and thursday we will stream one lecture from the original MIT course covering the text. before each lecture i will post the relevant chapters that it is recommended you read beforehand. there are also accompanying exercises that i highly encourage you to at least dabble in -- obviously they won't be graded (i'm not a TA, ain't nobody got time for that). all lectures will be streamed on my cytube channel. attached to this post is a PDF of SICP (you can also find it in other formats for free elsewhere on the internet). for the first lecture i recommend reading up to section 1.2.4. SICP uses a teaching dialect of the programming language Scheme similar to the R5RS standard (but not quite). for compatibility i highly recommend you download Racket. Racket supports sub-languages using the #lang feature. for simplicity you can use the DrRacket IDE provided with Racket, or you can use #lang sicp with your favorite text editor (emacs :lain_smug2: ) happy hacking :3

Replies (14)