Reviews for Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, 2nd Edition (Mit Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Series.)

1. Eye opening book

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, December 12th, 2009

   Great book to read for someone from an imperative background (like me). I believe it's 100% relevant today.
   
   I'd recommend getting hold of the lectures from MIT's site to accompany the book. Sussman comes across as utterly engaging in these.

2. Old school, hardcore computer science

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, October 12th, 2006

   I would hate to see the code from the reviewer who thinks recursion is no longer a valid topic for computer programming.
   
   I agree with some of the other comments, this book is old school, but is that a bad thing. There are a lot of CS students graduating these days with little understanding of the basic. How many understand pointers, ( or even recursion ) for that matter.
   
   Its interesting but a lot of the top programmers seem to have graduated the MIT course, few of them have a Computing & Business Studies degree !!!
   
   Buy this book, work through it slowly, and enjoy the brain twisting knowledge you gain from it when you get to the end

3. Not for beginnners!

   Rated 1 out of 5 stars, January 12th, 2006

   I am doing a first year Computer Science degree.. This books is always recommended as being the best not only to learn scheme but also to program for beginners. I used it only once, because I found the level in it too high. I will suggest to buy the book only if u have programmed before in any other high-level language. Those students from my course who had experience found the book very interesting and thought that it went into good detail unlike maybe other scheme books.

4. Try before buying

   Rated 3 out of 5 stars, August 12th, 2004

   I haven't read the book and find it hard to know what it's all about because the reviews are so polarized. But I've learned that the book is used in an MIT course called 6.001. If you search the web for that you'll find the course's homepage with an ONLINE COPY of the book. There you can see for yourself if you like it. You can also download additional material including Scheme.

5. Long winded and irrelevant.

   Rated 1 out of 5 stars, February 12th, 2002

   Fails to explain simple concepts simply. Lingers over concepts that are not that useful in the real world (recursion, lazy evaluation). Fails to explore some major concepts (useability, system specification) adequatly. Scheme is the wrong tool to explain OO concepts, the rest of the world has moved onto better languages. This book is stuck in 1985. This book should be retitled Structure and Interpretation of Unmaintainable Bloatware.