Gerald Jay Sussman

A new edition of a book, written in a humorous question-and-answer style, that shows how to implement and use an elegant little programming language for logic programming.The goal of this book is to show the beauty and elegance of relational programming, which captures the essence of logic programming. The book shows how to implement a relational programming language in Scheme, or in any other functional language, and demonstrates the remarkable flexibility of the resulting relational programs. As in the first edition, the pedagogical method is a series of questions and answers, which proceed with the characteristic humor that marked The Little Schemer and The Seasoned Schemer. Familiarity with a functional language or with the first five chapters of The Little Schemer is assumed. For this second edition, the authors have greatly simplified the programming language used in the book, as well as the implementation of the language. In addition to revising the text extensively, and simplifying and revising the "Laws" and "Commandments," they have added explicit "Translation" rules to ease translation of Scheme functions into relations.

A new version of the classic and widely used text with implementations in JavaScript. Ever since the publication of its first edition in 1984, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) has influenced computer science curricula around the world. Widely adopted as a textbook, the book has its origins in a popular entry-level computer science course taught by Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman at MIT. SICP introduces the reader to central ideas of computation by establishing a series of mental models for computation. Earlier editions used the programming language Scheme in their program examples. This new edition has been adapted for JavaScript. The first three chapters of SICP cover programming concepts that are common to all modern high-level programming languages. Chapters four and five, which used Scheme to formulate language processors for Scheme, required revision. Chapter four offers substantial new material, in particular an introduction to the notion of program parsing. The JavaScript subset used this edition is designed to be just expressive enough for presenting the ideas of SICP with a conciseness and precision that matches the original. A JavaScript sublanguage and function library has been designed for each chapter, and a web-based programming environment, Source Academy, has been developed to strengthen the students' adherence to the chosen sublanguage.

Strategies for building large systems that can be easily adapted for new situations with only minor programming modifications.Time pressures encourage programmers to write code that works well for a narrow purpose, with no room to grow. But the best systems are evolvable; they can be adapted for new situations by adding code, rather than changing the existing code. The authors describe techniques they have found effective--over their combined 100-plus years of programming experience--that will help programmers avoid programming themselves into corners. The authors explore ways to enhance flexibility by: - Organizing systems using combinators to compose mix-and-match parts, ranging from small functions to whole arithmetics, with standardized interfaces- Augmenting data with independent annotation layers, such as units of measurement or provenance- Combining independent pieces of partial information using unification or propagation- Separating control structure from problem domain with domain models, rule systems and pattern matching, propagation, and dependency-directed backtracking- Extending the programming language, using dynamically extensible evaluators

An explanation of the mathematics needed as a foundation for a deep understanding of general relativity or quantum field theory.Physics is naturally expressed in mathematical language. Students new to the subject must simultaneously learn an idiomatic mathematical language and the content that is expressed in that language. It is as if they were asked to read Les Miserables while struggling with French grammar. This book offers an innovative way to learn the differential geometry needed as a foundation for a deep understanding of general relativity or quantum field theory as taught at the college level.The approach taken by the authors (and used in their classes at MIT for many years) differs from the conventional one in several ways, including an emphasis on the development of the covariant derivative and an avoidance of the use of traditional index notation for tensors in favor of a semantically richer language of vector fields and differential forms. But the biggest single difference is the authors' integration of computer programming into their explanations. By programming a computer to interpret a formula, the student soon learns whether or not a formula is correct. Students are led to improve their program, and as a result improve their understanding.

Die Übersetzung der bewährten Einführung in die Informatik, entstanden am Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), wird seit Jahren erfolgreich in der Lehre eingesetzt. Schritt für Schritt werden Konstruktion und Abstraktion von Daten und Prozeduren dargestellt. Von der Modularisierung bis zum Problemlösen mit Registermaschinen werden verschiedene Programmierparadigmen entwikckelt und die effektive Handhabung von Komplexität gezeigt. Als Programmiersprache wird SCHEME verwendet, ein Dialekt von LISP. Alle Programme laufen in jeder dem IEEE-Standard entsprechenden SCHEME-Implementierung.

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs has had a dramatic impact on computer science curricula over the past decade. This long-awaited revision contains changes throughout the text. There are new implementations of most of the major programming systems in the book, including the interpreters and compilers, and the authors have incorporated many small changes that reflect their experience teaching the course at MIT since the first edition was published. A new theme has been introduced that emphasizes the central role played by different approaches to dealing with time in computational models: objects with state, concurrent programming, functional programming and lazy evaluation, and nondeterministic programming. There are new example sections on higher-order procedures in graphics and on applications of stream processing in numerical programming, and many new exercises. In addition, all the programs have been reworked to run in any Scheme implementation that adheres to the IEEE standard.