While I am reading, I always try to distinguish which part of thoughts I used to learn from here when I read it for the first time, and which part I learned from Dan’s course. And, surprisingly enough, I learned almost all basic factors from Dan, though I always felt I learned a lot of things last year when I began to read it.
The name of this book is perfect for the content – Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. It does not teach about how to program, nor a specific programming language. Of course it is a legacy book. But it seems to me that I cannot get enough from this book unless I have mastered quite a few programming languages. After Dan taught me everything about basic aspects of programming languages and I played with Ruby and Racket for a long time, even after I leaned all those “nontrivial” trivial things about C++, when I read it now, I am able to distinguish which part is the essence and which part is written just for the ease of learning, and I can fully focus on how to put different abstractions into different layers– in other words, learning the structure and interpretation of computer programs.
I read a comment, saying that Chapter 4 and 5 are the essence of the book. Hopefully, I can finish reading it before September, and leave enough time for Design Patterns.