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Ask HN: Please help me find one specific book about programming mentioned on HN.

3 points by urza ↗ HN
Hello, some time ago, I came across a reference to a book here on HN. It was probably some article on Main page. I am trying to find it (the book or the article), but no luck so far.

The things I remember:

The book was about learning programming. Maybe programming in general or maybe LISP, I am not sure.

The comment or blog was about how he (the blogger or commenter) realized that the concept of variables was introduced in some later chapter in the book and how he was amazed by that. He was comparing to that usually books about learning programming start with variables in first chapter.

It is probably some older book.

He was mentioning that the book reads almost like a fiction.

Thanks for any ideas or help. I tried google, amazon, searchyc but cant find it.

3 comments

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phamilton
SICP? TAOCP? (probably obvious, but I figured I put them on the table)
gdl
"The Little Schemer" and "The Seasoned Schemer", maybe? They're well-regarded around here and written as a lighthearted back-and-forth dialogue. I haven't gotten around to reading them yet, but quickly skimming through them on a hunch it looks like normal variables don't show up until midway through the second book (and even then are used minimally). The books use lots of small examples to teach functional programming from the ground up, and so use literal data values instead of variables to keep things concise and focused.
urza
Thak you both,

it was SICP, I finally found the article http://thecleancoder.blogspot.com/2010/08/why-clojure.html

And this is the paragraph that pop in my head today:

On page 216 they introduce a concept so familiar that most programming books start with it. On page 216 they prove to you that you've had some wrong ideas about programming all along. On page two hundred and sixteen, after talking about algorithms, data structures, recursion, iteration, trees, high-order procedures, scoping, local variables, data abstraction, closures, message-passing, and a plethora of other topics -- after all that, they introduce assignment!

To clarify: I havent read SICP, I donw know LISP, but I am attracted to Clojure.

I am puttint SICP to my to.read list right now.

And also this to my to.watch list http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-sussma...