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Comment by trilinearnz | Hacker News Reader

Too many =P But seriously, there are certain volumes I would never part with. For example: The Pragmatic Programmer, SICP, Design Patterns, The C Programming Language. Tomes which are definitive and timeless.

I also have a few for purely nostalgic value, representative of key moments in my past. Notably: the OpenGL Red Book and C++ The Complete Reference.

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Is SICP worth reading? I keep hearing about it, but it seems like it's mostly a resource for learning lisp. Is that not the case?

I haven’t read SICP, but I’ve heard it’s like Let Over Lambda which I have read. Ostensibly, LOL is about how LISPs work, but in reality it’s a much more fundamental look into how execution and scoping do what they do, why, the semantics, etc. I mostly write Python now, but I have a much deeper appreciation and understanding of object orientation from reading LOL. You may find the same with SICP.

SICP isn't really about Lisp but it's examples are in Lisp (Scheme actually). You can read the book for free on the mitpress website.

yes, but you need to have time. It's quite time consuming.

the first chapter will introduce you some usage of lisp. Rest of the book will introduce some programming concept. 1. Recursive (tail recursive!) 2. Abstraction 3. State and Concurrency (Lisp has concurrency! what a surprise!) 4. Streams (if you have read this, reactive programming will be piece of cake for you) 5. REPL (read eval print loop) 6. Logic Programming 7. A simple virtual machine 8. and lots more........these are what I remember for now

It will improve your knowledge on programming. WAY BETTER THAN THOSE BOOKS JUST TELL YOU HOW TO USE A SPECIFIC LANGUAGE.

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