2 HN users recommended this talk2 months2023–2025score 2
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN uses it as the canonical explanation from Sussman himself of why SICP ended at MIT.
A short Portuguese-language excerpt of Gerald Sussman's 2016 NYC Lisp Meetup talk explaining why MIT replaced the Scheme-based 6.001 (SICP) course with Python courses. The full talk is linked in the description.
“we can't mention SICP without referencing this (relatively recent) video” (HN, 2025)
Don't miss Sussman's talk linked from the post: [this video] This stuff resonates with me deeply. The reality of the modern computing world is a clusterfuck that no single person understands, especially because, like Sussman said, parts are entirely secret/proprietary anyway. Therefore I think an engineer should be skilled in a) removing the unnecessary bits of that clusterfuck that are not necessary to their problem and b) getting stuff done without having a complete understanding of the whole system. (b) sounds scary as fuck, but I think that's the (sad?) reality we live in in the software and hardware world. Embrace the cluster; embrace the fuck.
Sussman talk on modern computing's complexity and why SICP ended.
Also... HtDP (How to Design Programs) is a good follow-on to SICP. Oh... and I think we can't mention SICP without referencing this (relatively recent) video about why MIT moved from Scheme to Python for intro classes: [this video]
Video on why MIT moved intro classes from Scheme to Python.
My understanding is that the authors of SICP themselves wanted to update the curriculum - not just a language change, but to cover something at a higher level of abstraction. See: [this video]
Explains why SICP's authors wanted to update the curriculum.
Related, Gerald Jay Sussman explains why they pulled the plug on MIT 6001 (SICP) here: [this video] To me, part of the problem is that devs continuously change tech stacks without poking at the layers underneath. So only a few become proficient enough to focus on the abstractions. Similarly, now many designers are not more than technicians of graphic design tools.
In a sense this has been true of conventional programs for a while now. Gerald Sussman discusses the idea when talking about why MIT switched their introductory programming course from Scheme to Python: < [this video] >.
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