SICP Diary - Chapter 1
February 2023
Harold Abelson, Gerald Sussman, and Julie Sussman's Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs seems like one of those books you just have to read if you want to get a deep grasp on a certain something about computer science. I'm not the one to say what exactly, but if gurus like Peter Norvig and Paul Graham have run to Amazon to leave 5-star reviews, I think it's worth checking out.
What's more, the entire book is avaialable for free in HTML format online! I bought a hard copy like a dinosaur, and am planning on working through the exercises over the next few months (and probably more diligently after I graduate from university in April).
SICP uses Scheme, a minimal Lisp dialect, as its teaching language. It's still possible to install the distribution of Scheme that MIT (until recently) used for their introduction to computer science course, but I am opting to complete the book's exercise in Racket instead. Thanks to its support for other Lisp dialects, it's possible to use a SICP-compatible version of Scheme by putting #lang sicp at the beginning of your programs.
Anyway, let's go!
Building Abstractions with Procedures
Exercise 1.3 - Define a procedure that takes three numbers as arguments and returns the sum of the squares of the two larger numbers. (solution)
This one wasn't too bad. I wasn't sure how to best determine the largest two arguments, but settled on identifying the one to 'leave out' using a min procedure that takes three arguments.