MIT OpenCourseWare
10 HN recommenders · recommended in 16 months, 2019–2026
1:12:56 · 421K views · Aug 22, 2019
The first lecture of MIT's 6.001 (SICP) with Abelson and Sussman, giving an overview of the course and an introduction to Lisp. It argues that computer science is about managing complexity and abstraction, not computers.
HN people recommend the SICP lectures as a deeper, livelier route into the book and a formative course even for seasoned programmers.
20 comments from Hacker News
It's on-demand on YouTube[1] and an excellent course that is still very much relevant with very high production quality circa 1986. What makes it special is who is teaching it, which is the original authors of SICP. The course thus completely complements their book and is in the same style. The courses from later years are also on YouTube, but they don't feel the same. [1] this video
Learn LISP/Scheme and lots of fundamental concepts you probably have a feel for, but in a far more profound way: 1. First watch the SICP series ( this video ) 2. Then work through the book ( [LINK] ) If you really do the exercises (an hour here and an hour there), you can feel you brain getting wrapped around many core notions in very illuminating ways.
The class mentioned in the article was actually made available under Creative Commons by the MIT OpenCourseWare[1], you can see the entirely of the course in Youtube. I watched and cannot recommend it enough, even for seasoned programmers [1]: this video
The real beauty is in how few operators you need to achieve maximal expressiveness in a programming language. It makes other programming languages seem extra. Highly recommend the SICP lectures this video
Not even a second of thought: Sussman's & Abelson's SICP this video especially the section on streams ( [LINK] ) It changed my outook on programming by pi degrees and I feel it is more needed then ever.