I read SICP in high school, and it really changed how I thought about programming. Before that, the languages I knew were Python, Java, C++. Ooh, ooh, and TI-BASIC. It seemed to my naive like languages were done. I'd written a language of my own, and looking at it now, the changes I'd made look so shallow nowadays...<p>SICP changed that. SICP didn't talk about classes/objects by introducing the syntax, it gave a problem where polymorphism was a perfect solution, and built up an object system from scratch. SICP didn't talk about mutation as just something you do --- SICP discussed how it solved a specific problem. Not claiming that SICP is the be-all end-all of textbooks; but if you're motivated and already know how to program, it is an a brilliant excursion into the fundamentals of programming. In any case, after SICP I realized that language theory is a branch of computer science itself; a branch I soon fell in love with.<p>There's a continuation to this story --- the summer after high school, I wrote a compiler and started reading lambda the ultimate. Learned type theory, started writing Haskell and Common Lisp, and quickly produced several dozen interpreters... And now I'm doing research under Sussman himself!<p>And so for this Kindle-optimized SICP, thank you!
I'm sure it will get at least one more young hacker into language theory...
The sad part about this is that it shows how much Kindle's current PDF conversion service needs to improve. I have tried sending PDFs to the email conversion service and more often than not it screws up diagrams, figures and equations. Even text documents, which you don't need to pass through the conversion, don't always render well (try transferring any RFC to your Kindle and see how it comes out).
JIT. After hours, my workmates and I just started watching SICP vids/"taking" the MIT opencourseware.<p><a href="http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-001-structure-and-interpretation-of-computer-programs-spring-2005/" rel="nofollow">http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...</a>
I did something similar for Project Gutenberg texts: a set of scripts to download them in bulk, do some textual reformatting and file renaming on them, all geared toward making them better looking and more accessible for my ebook reader (which is not a Kindle, but the texts might me more palatable on a Kindle too...). Without this preprocessing the Gutenberg texts were almost unreadable on the ebook reader.<p>I describe it at <a href="http://www.michielovertoom.com/python/gutenberg-ebook-scraping/" rel="nofollow">http://www.michielovertoom.com/python/gutenberg-ebook-scrapi...</a> and the source is on Github, too.
OK HN, what's the super power you have? This is like the 10th time you delivered something I wanted in less than 24 hours of just thinking of it.<p>Thanks a lot.
Post from six months ago for getting epub version of SICP (with a user's link to another Kindle version and links to ways to convert epub to mobi)
<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2419516" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2419516</a>
This is really great. I was thinking about buying a TouchPad for all my textbooks, but I greatly prefer the e-ink display of the Kindle. With this, I no longer have an excuse for the TouchPad.<p>Thanks!