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Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs: JavaScript Edition (MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science)

by Martin Henz (Adapter), Tobias Wrigstad (Adapter), Harold Abelson (Author),
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 66 ratings
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A new version of the classic and widely used text adapted for the JavaScript programming language.

Since the publication of its first edition in 1984 and its second edition in 1996, 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 version of the second 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 significant revision. Chapter four offers new material, in particular an introduction to the notion of program parsing. The evaluator and compiler in chapter five introduce a subtle stack discipline to support return statements (a prominent feature of statement-oriented languages) without sacrificing tail recursion.

The JavaScript programs included in the book run in any implementation of the language that complies with the ECMAScript 2020 specification, using the JavaScript package sicp provided by the MIT Press website.
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  1. ISBN-10
    0262543230
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0262543231
  3. Publisher
    The MIT Press
  4. Publication date
    April 12, 2022
  5. Part of series
    MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    7.06 x 1.09 x 10.06 inches
  8. Print length
    640 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“A classic, meticulously revisited and modernized with talent, pedagogy, and substance. Thank you, Martin, Tobias, and Julie!”
—Olivier Danvy, Yale-NUS College
 
 “When I am asked ‘How can I become a better programmer?,’ I recommend this book.”
—Douglas Crockford, author of How JavaScript Works
 
“How much is a programming book influenced by its programming language? SICP in JavaScript is remarkably fluid, an excellent choice for today’s programmers.”
—Peter Van Roy, Université catholique de Louvain

About the Author

Harold Abelson is Class of 1922 Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at MIT. Gerald Jay Sussman is Panasonic Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT. Martin Henz is Associate Professor of Computer Science at the National University of Singapore. Tobias Wrigstad is Professor of Computer Science at Uppsala University.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ The MIT Press (April 12, 2022)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 640 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0262543230
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0262543231
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.43 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.06 x 1.09 x 10.06 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 66 ratings

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  1. Julie Sussman

    Julie Sussman

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  2. Tobias Wrigstad

    Tobias Wrigstad

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    Tobias Wrigstad is a Professor in Computer Science and Distinguished Teacher at Uppsala University in Sweden, at the department of Information Technology. Tobias' main research interests are the design and implementation of programming languages. In 2012, he was the recipient of the Junior Dahl-Nygaard Prize for his work on type systems. As an educator, Tobias is passionate about the mastery learning approach to teaching. In 2019, he was the recipient of the pedagogical award of the Math, Science, and Technology faculty of Uppsala University. Tobias is a husband, a father, and occasionally but passionately, a role-playing game activist. In the last capacity, he was a 2009 finalist for the Diana Jones award.

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  3. Martin Henz

    Martin Henz

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    Martin HENZ is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, National University of Singapore (NUS). He obtained his M.Sc. from the University of Stony Brook in 1992 and his Dr.rer.nat. from the Saarland University in 1997.

    His research and teaching revolves around the scalability of experiential learning. With his NUS colleagues, he scaled the experiential course first-year course CS1101S Programming Methodology. Martin founded the experiential course CS4215 Programming Language Implementation, and offers experiential undergraduate software projects. His publications cover computer science and engineering education, programming languages, combinatorial search, and electric vehicles.

    Martin adapted "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs” by Hal Abelson and Gerald J. Sussman to JavaScript with Tobias Wrigstad and Julie Sussman and initiated the Source Academy, an immersive online experiential environment for learning programming. He co-founded the software company Workforce Optimizer Pte Ltd with Alan Sevugan, and was the supervisor of Dr Rahul Singhal, co-founder of the education company Cerebry.

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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
66 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

F. Huynh
5.0 out of 5 stars A good revision to a great text
Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2022
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I originally read this book nearly 20 years ago while still in college at UC Berkeley. I did not read it cover to cover, but only as needed for assignments. Its still a beautiful introduction to some of the more abstract concepts in computer science, the translation to javascript still captures a lot of the original essence. My only gripe is that there's a javascript package that must be installed to run the code, i.e. you can't run all the examples with plain vanilla javascript. I would have liked if they had shown some of the implementation of the meta-circular evaluator's parser primitive. This book will not teach you every day javascript, the kind you'd use doing front-end development, it'll teach you how to think about modularity, but from an odd view in that it doesn't utilize javascript objects at all. Not so practical but still very interesting.
27 people found this helpful
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frog
5.0 out of 5 stars Scheme gate-keepers: be gone
Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2022
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Ignore the reviewer claiming Javascript that is going to open a giant black pit in the center of the universe and suck everything into it. Javascript isn't a bad language - frankly the close minded maximalism is what is wrong with the industry.

SICP is a fantastic and beautiful book. I was excited to read the Javascript edition since I am much more familiar with the language compared to Scheme. I suspect many future readers will feel the same, and will know get to enjoy the wonder of SICP through the lens of a language that is much more approachable (and relevant! than Scheme.)
55 people found this helpful
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Joel Hooks
5.0 out of 5 stars JavaScript edition is extremely welcome!
Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2022
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Thankfully the original Scheme edition will be available forever so computer language trads will have that to comfort them. It’s noble to hate JavaScript on principle, but if that’s not you then this book is a treat.

It’s amazing to have a practical choice for learning these fundamental concepts in the ubiquitous language of the modern internet.

Love to see it!
20 people found this helpful
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Yesudeep Mangalapilly
5.0 out of 5 stars The language doesn't matter. Read the book.
Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2022
I dabble in both JavaScript and some forms of lisp from time to time. This book has clear and concise code unlike the shegamagoo we have in the form of the myriads of JS plugins and the hodgepodge of broken dependencies online. No language is perfect. The book is a great one. Please read it and ignore the naysayers.
11 people found this helpful
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LA in Dallas
2.0 out of 5 stars Programming, in the abstract
Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2023
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Here is the dedication of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs: JavaScript Edition

This book is dedicated, in respect and admiration, to the spirit that lives in the computer.

Now, perhaps it is narrow-minded of me, but I am of the opinion that a book so dedicated and so titled ought to have something to do with real computers. My main problem with SICP (AKA "The Wizard Book") is that it doesn't. OK, that is unfair, but only slightly. I will explain.

I taught myself to program starting in 1973. A month or two after I began I was totally baffled by a bug in a simple program I wrote to do a mathematical task. The nature of the bug became clear to me only when I developed a clearer picture (vague and rudimentary at that stage of my education) of what was happening physically inside the computer when it ran my code. Once I had that concrete picture the nature of my problem became so clear to me that it was hard to understand why I had ever thought my original code would work.

SICP is based on the entry-level computer science course taught by the authors (Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman) at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) from 1980-1997. This course was so highly thought of by computer scientists that it mutated and metastasized to other universities, notably the National University of Singapore (NUS), where this JavaScript mutant version came into being (adapted from the original Scheme-based version by Martin Henz and Tobias Wrigstad).

In SICP computer programs are discussed as abstract processes. The authors describe how to build a program as a series of layers of abstraction from the highest level of description to lower levels. Implicitly they admit that somewhere, if you go far enough, the rubber has to meet the road -- the program has to describe things that happen at the bare metal level. But they never go down there. Even the final chapter, chapter 5, "Computing with Register Machines", deals only with an abstract machine.

Now, let me be clear -- abstraction is essential in programming -- and there is a lot of value in SICP. No one disputes that. But I contend that some understanding of what happens at bare metal is also essential.

This all ties into the choice of a programming language, about which I feel compelled to spend a few paragraphs. (Feel free to skip.) The original SICP used Scheme, a dialect of LISP. It is obvious from the defensiveness of SICP that even Abelson and Sussman recognized that could be a controversial choice. There are, throughout the front matter and early chapters of SICP, many paragraphs that feel like they ought to be introduced with "And now, a Word from our Sponsors" about how LISP and LISP data structures are the ideal way to program. In later chapters the authors make numerous snide remarks about C, probably the dominant programming language of that time. For instance, one exercise introduces the character "Cy D. Fect, a reformed C programmer", and C is elsewhere described as a low-level language.

This JavaScript edition is a sort of partial acknowledgement of the reality that Scheme was not destined to become the dominant programming language. However, it would be a bad mistake to think that SICP is going to teach you to program in JavaScript. In their Preface, Henz and Wrigstad admit

The book covers just a small fraction of JavaScript, so a reader would be ill-advised to use it to learn the language. For example, the notion of a JavaScript object—considered one of its fundamental ingredients by any measure—is not even mentioned!
It was straightforward to translate the programs of chapters 1–3 to JavaScript by adding libraries that mirror Scheme primitives

Thus in chapter 2 we are introduced to data object pair, which is -- let us not play dumb -- a Scheme CONS. The main value of the JS version is that it is available on the web from Source Academy, with runnable versions of all code and exercises embedded.

One big difference, to my mind, between JavaScript and Scheme on the one hand and C on the other, is that C was designed by people who know very well how real physical computers work (this, by the way, is also true of Abelson and Sussman) and who deliberately designed a programming language to reflect and not hide physical reality (this, emphatically, is NOT true of Abelson and Sussman).

Abelson and Sussman are defensive because, in one important sense, Scheme lost the war. The sense I speak of is popularity, or breadth of acceptance. If you wish to earn a living as a programmer, familiarity with C and its successor C++ is virtually a necessity. In contrast, if the only language you feel comfortable with is Scheme, your employment opportunities will be limited. Now I don't claim that popularity is necessarily a measure of merit in any global or artistic sense. But it is not something you can afford to ignore if you intend to work with other people.

In fact, MIT stopped teaching SICP. In a video you can find by searching for "SICP: the end of an era" Sussman admits that Scheme lost the war in the sense I just described, and that other languages are now more practical. Not C -- he could never stoop so low -- but python, at least.

SICP was one of those books that evoked the dreaded "Thank God that's over!" feeling on completion. I would not recommend it to anyone.
10 people found this helpful
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CJ
2.0 out of 5 stars good concept, bad writing
Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2023
I think this book has a good progression and concept layout, but the language is needlessly convoluted and full of run-on sentences. Language needs to be edited so it communicates the concepts more clearly.
One person found this helpful
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The Green Dasher
1.0 out of 5 stars Javascript? Javascript? Really?
Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2022
Javascript in SICP is like dog poop on an eclair. Thank you, but no, never.
42 people found this helpful
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CMC
1.0 out of 5 stars Borderline blasphemy to rewrite the classic in JavaScript
Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2022
Talk about the dumbing down of todays students. I guess it's time to teach for the lowest common denominator now. Look up what the Paul Graham essay about Blub languages. This does not bode well for the future of the industry
19 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Steven Myers
4.0 out of 5 stars Code examples are terrible
Reviewed in Canada on May 7, 2022
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Interesting ideas but the examples are all non-idiomatic JavaScript, it’s like a pseudo scheme. Would be nice if the ideas were illustrated with close to production ready code.
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Client d'Amazon
1.0 out of 5 stars SICP in JavaScript - stayed with lisp edition
Reviewed in France on July 25, 2023
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Hello!

I was (a)waiting for this edition but I 'm confused because JavaScript used natural arithmetic expression and apart the 131 page and at the beginning there’s no discussion and comparaison to prefix and infix(natural) arithmetic expression dissertation - what’s a lack!

I confused about that and it stops me reading furthermore (I stay with the 21 videos in lisp from the 1980’s at MIT OpenCourseware).

Sorry for the author’s work.
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