SICP: o fim de uma era
Computação Raiz2 HN recommenders · recommended in 2 months, 2023–2025
talk · general · evergreen · 2023–2025 on HN
A short Portuguese-language excerpt of Gerald Sussman's 2016 NYC Lisp Meetup talk explaining why MIT replaced the Scheme-based 6.001 (SICP) course with Python courses. The full talk is linked in the description.
HN uses it as the canonical explanation from Sussman himself of why SICP ended at MIT.
Up next
8 mo on HNCasey Muratori – The Big OOPs: Anatomy of a Thirty-five-year Mistake – BSC 2025
Better Software Conference
11 HN recommender · 2025–2026
18 mo on HNRuby Conf 12 - Y Not- Adventures in Functional Programming by Jim Weirich
Confreaks
17 HN recommender · 2013–2026
14 mo on HNThe Soul of Erlang and Elixir • Sasa Juric • GOTO 2019
GOTO Conferences
16 HN recommender · 2019–2024
14 mo on HN"Simple Made Easy" - Rich Hickey (2011)
Strange Loop Conference
14 HN recommender · 2022–2026
13 mo on HN"Making Impossible States Impossible" by Richard Feldman
elm-conf
9 HN recommender · 2017–2026
12 mo on HNWilliam Byrd on "The Most Beautiful Program Ever Written" [PWL NYC]
PapersWeLove
11 HN recommender · 2017–2026
11 mo on HNThe Value of Values with Rich Hickey
InfoQ
10 HN recommender · 2014–2023
12 mo on HNWhy Isn't Functional Programming the Norm? – Richard Feldman
Metosin
12 HN recommender · 2019–2025
11 mo on HNMaybe Not - Rich Hickey
ClojureTV
14 HN recommender · 2018–2025
11 mo on HNSolving Problems the Clojure Way - Rafal Dittwald
Clojure/north
10 HN recommender · 2019–2025
10 mo on HNLecture 1A: Overview and Introduction to Lisp
MIT OpenCourseWare
10 HN recommender · 2019–2026
10 mo on HNConway's Game Of Life in APL
Dyalog
11 HN recommender · 2010–2024
6 comments from Hacker News
Also... HtDP (How to Design Programs) is a good follow-on to SICP. Oh... and I think we can't mention SICP without referencing this (relatively recent) video about why MIT moved from Scheme to Python for intro classes: ▶ this video
Don't miss Sussman's talk linked from the post: ▶ this video This stuff resonates with me deeply. The reality of the modern computing world is a clusterfuck that no single person understands, especially because, like Sussman said, parts are entirely secret/proprietary anyway. Therefore I think an engineer should be skilled in a) removing the unnecessary bits of that clusterfuck that are not necessary to their problem and b) getting stuff done without having a complete understanding of the whole system. (b) sounds scary as fuck, but I think that's the (sad?) reality we live in in the software and hardware world. Embrace the cluster; embrace the fuck.
In a sense this has been true of conventional programs for a while now. Gerald Sussman discusses the idea when talking about why MIT switched their introductory programming course from Scheme to Python: < ▶ this video >.
Not necessarily as relevant, programming has changed a lot since SICP came out. Sussman says so himself - ▶ this video
Related, Gerald Jay Sussman explains why they pulled the plug on MIT 6001 (SICP) here: ▶ this video To me, part of the problem is that devs continuously change tech stacks without poking at the layers underneath. So only a few become proficient enough to focus on the abstractions. Similarly, now many designers are not more than technicians of graphic design tools.
My understanding is that the authors of SICP themselves wanted to update the curriculum - not just a language change, but to cover something at a higher level of abstraction. See: ▶ this video