Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
Cover of the second edition
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| Author | Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman, Julie Sussman |
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| Subject | Computer programming |
| Genre | Textbook |
| Publisher | MIT Press |
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Publication date
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1985 (1st ed.), 1996 (2nd ed.) |
| Pages | 657 |
| ISBN | (2nd ed.) |
| LC Class | QA76.6 .A255 1996 |
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) is a textbook aiming to teach the principles of computer programming, such as abstraction in programming, metalinguistic abstraction, recursion, interpreters, and modular programming. It is widely considered a classic text in computer science, and is colloquially known as the wizard book, due to the wizard on the jacket. It was first published in 1985 by MIT Press and written by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professors Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman, with Julie Sussman. It was formerly used as the textbook of MIT introductory programming class and at other schools. Before SICP, the introductory courses were almost always filled with learning the details of some programming language, while SICP focuses on finding general patterns from specific problems and building software tools that embody each pattern.
Using Scheme, a dialect of the Lisp programming language, the book explains core computer science concepts.
The program also introduces a practical implementation of the register machine concept, defining and developing an assembler for such a construct, which is used as a virtual machine for the implementation of interpreters and compilers in the book, and as a testbed for illustrating the implementation and effect of modifications to the evaluation mechanism. Working Scheme systems based on the design described in this book are quite common student projects.
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