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Comment by hellbannedguy | Hacker News Reader

883 pages. What is the book for dummies, like myself? I can put up websites, but definitely need more education on Programming.

Or, what are the must know chapters in Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programming should I study?

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How to Design Programs (the 2nd edition)—<https://htdp.org>—is more recent and more approachable, but in some ways follows in the footsteps of SICP. It's a great place to start before digging in to SICP or one of the other "classics," but it's also a good choice even if you just want to read one book.

Start with The Little Schemer [1] as a prequel to SICP. If you're going to read SICP, look at the beautiful (and unofficial) typeset version [2].

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Little-Schemer-Daniel-P-Friedman/dp/0...

[2] http://sarabander.github.io/sicp/

I’d suggest reading from the foreword and working through chapters 1-3. You’ll know if you want to finish by then.

It’s a really fun read; it’s an exercise in thinking differently. If you’re looking for a new/different perspective on programming this is it.

People either love or hate this book, but it’s popular for a reason. It’s not uncommon to struggle a bit through the exercises. Some people dislike it for this reason.

The intro CS course I took waded based on this book and I never even saw this book. It wasn’t until after the course was over that I found, read, and worked through (most) of it. I took my time with it—a little each day.

It’ll definitely grant you some “aha!” moments.

And it is totally worth it to do the exercises.

You can also take the course programming languages from the University of Washington on Coursera. The 3 courses use standard ML, racket and ruby to teach concepts a learned programmer should know.

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