[H-GEN] Re: Upcoming talks: SICP lecture series

Greg Black gjb at gbch.net
Sat Sep 18 21:03:58 EDT 2004


On 2004-09-18, Ben Fowler wrote:

> Recently, some members of HUMBUG (who are studying programming 
> languages) suggested that for HUMBUG meetings that have no prior talks 
> scheduled, we should screen the excellent MIT-produced lecture series, 
> 'Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs', named after the 
> classic computer science text.
> 
> So for each HUMBUG meeting from the 9th of October [1] inclusive (the 
> meeting after the AGM), we'll be screening a single lecture at 5pm.  

Since nobody has protested about this proposal yet, I'll offer
some reasons for dropping the idea.

Generally, Humbug talks are expected to be of wide interest to
the meeting population and represent some synthesis of material
that is not easy to find by other means.

These talks are only of interest to student programmers (and, to
a lesser extent, working programmers who might want to learn the
LISP family of languages).  For the majority of the people I see
at Humbug meetings, they'll be boring and useless.  For those
who will find them of interest, especially the students, the
talks are readily available for individual viewing.

If the student programmers want Humbug to provide something for
them, why don't we remind them that there are several skilled
programmers who attend most meetings and who are only too happy
to engage in discussions of the real-world application of the
stuff they are studying?  The skilled people are easy to find at
the meetings.

And, if there was an identifiable demand for it, we could even
arrange for a real talk, perhaps using a panel of the skilled
people, that would be aimed at dealing with real questions from
the student programmers.

I'm not deriding the SICP lectures themselves -- I'm sure they
are as good as they're said to be, although I've only read the
book and not seen the talks.  It just seems to me that it's not
a good use of a Humbug meeting.

Cheers, Greg




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