MIT OpenCourseWare
11 HN recommenders · recommended in 16 months, 2012–2024
1:12:56 · 995K views · Apr 8, 2009
The first lecture of MIT's 1986 6.001 Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, given by Harold Abelson, introducing Lisp and the idea of computer science as the study of process.
Seen as a classic and often the moment programming 'clicks'; commenters praise Abelson's opening that computer science is not about computers.
20 comments from Hacker News
Reminds me of the MIT SICP lecture videos from the 80s. The concepts of black box abstraction and the simplicity of using LISP like lego building blocks blew my mind and made me switch from being a UX designer dabbling in Rails to a full blown programmer. It was still entirely relevant to today even though it was a few decades old as the fundamentals of computer science are still fundamental. this video Hearing that intro music still brings a smile to my face. I just happen to be relearning math right now as I dive deeper into data science and this is perfect timing. Going to watch this series once I get through my math proofs book ("Book of Proof" by Richard Hammack which I recommend to people getting into math [LINK] ).
First 10 mins of the first Structure and Interpretation lecture (by Harold Abelson) [1] Famous first words ... "I'd like to welcome you to this course on computer science. Actually, that's a terrible way to start. Computer science is a terrible name for this business." ... and this is where it all clicked to me .... "Well, similarly, I think in the future people will look back and say, yes, those primitives in the 20th century were fiddling around with these gadgets called computers, but really what they were doing is starting to learn how to formalize intuitions about process " [1] this video
Heh that's interesting, I just watched 106A yesterday to get an idea of how the programming introduction course is compared to my university (utwente.nl). I actually was a bit disappointed to see that it is very much like our introduction course, except that this teacher is a bit more enthousiastic, and perhaps the course starts at an even more basic level I think. I think for real CS enthousiasts 6.001 at MIT is much more interesting (and fun) to watch: this video (it teaches scheme and the lecturer has an awesome way of explaining it)
Wow, what a MASSIVE missed opportunity to quote the best variation of this idea by far, done by Hal Abelson in the legendary "6001-Introduction to Computer Science" class on MIT in the 80s. You can check it here: this video Abelson in the first minute crosses both computer AND science, and references the also legendary SICP with "computer so-called science actually has a lot in common with magic". Honestly, this alone already made the article that empty.
One section of original lectures are freely available via MITs OpenCourseWare youtube channel: this video It would be quite difficult to beat these lectures, while they appear a bit dated, the content is great. SICP is a great way to learn about programming, although I am very surprised they got through the whole book in an introductory course. Chapters 4 and 5 cover some topics I was barely aware of nearing the end of my formal CS education.