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SICP Distilled

SICP Distilled

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Ch1 - Building Abstractions With Functions

  • Chapter 1 Distilled
  • Introduction
  • 1.1 - The Elements Of Programming
    • Expressions
    • Naming and the Environment
    • Evaluating Combinations
    • Defining New Functions
    • The Substitution Model
    • Exercises
    • Predicates
    • Conditional Expressions
    • Example: Newton’s Method
    • Functions as Black-Box Abstractions
  • 1.2 - Procedures and the Processes They Generate
    • Linear Recursion and Iteration
    • Tree Recursion
    • Orders of Growth
    • Exponentiation
    • Greatest Common Divisors
    • Example: Testing For Primality
  • 1.3 Higher Order Functions
  • Project - Blackjack

Ch2 - Building Abstractions With Data

  • Chapter 2 Distilled
  • Introduction
  • Data Abstraction
  • Everything From Nothing
  • Abstractions In Clojure
  • Clojure's Data Structures
  • Data Abstraction, Revisited
  • Escher
  • Project - Escher
  • Symbolic Data
  • Representing Sets
  • Huffman Encoding Trees
  • Zippers

Ch3 - Modularity, Objects, and State

  • Chapter 3 Distorted
  • Introduction
  • Concurrency in Clojure

Ch4 - Metalinguistic Abstraction

  • 4.1 - The Metacircular Evaluator
  • The Halting Problem
  • The Y Combinator
  • 4.2 - Lazy Evaluation
  • 4.3 - Nondeterministic Computing
  • 4.4 - Logic Programming

Exercise 1.1:

Below is a sequence of expressions. What is the result printed by the interpreter in response to each expression? Assume that the sequence is to be evaluated in the order in which it is presented.

10
(+ 5 3 4)
(- 9 1)
(/ 6 2)
(+ (* 2 4) (- 4 6))
(def a 3)
(def b (+ a 1))
(+ a b (* a b))
(= a b)
(if (and (> b a) (< b (* a b)))
  b
  a)
(cond (= a 4) 6
      (= b 4) (+ 6 7 a)
      :else 25)
(+ 2 (if (> b a) b a))
(* (cond (> a b) a
         (< a b) b
         :else -1)
   (+ a 1))

Exercise 1.2

Translate the following expression into prefix form:

$$ \frac{5+4+(2-(3-(6+\frac{4}{5})))}{3(6-2)(2-7)} $$

Exercise 1.3:

Define a function that takes three numbers as arguments and returns the sum of the squares of the two larger numbers.

Exercise 1.4:

Observe that our model of evaluation allows for combinations whose operators are com- pound expressions. Use this observation to describe the behavior of the following function:

(defn a-plus-abs-b [a b]
  ((if (> b 0) + -)
   a
   b))

Exercise 1.5:

Ben Bitdiddle has invented a test to determine whether the interpreter he is faced with is using applicative-order evaluation or normal-order evaluation.

He defines the following two functions:

(defn p []
  (p))
(defn test [x y]
  (if (= x 0)
      0
      y))

Then he evaluates the expression

(test 0 (p))

What behavior will Ben observe with an interpreter that uses applicative-order evaluation?

What behavior will he observe with an interpreter that uses normal-order evaluation?

(Assume that the evaluation rule for the special form if is the same whether the interpreter is using normal or applicative order: The predicate expression is evaluated first, and the result determines whether to evaluate the consequent or the alternative expression.)