Have you read your FUQIN SICP?

In my systems programming class we all had to write a simple unix utility in C to read and display students' questions for our weekly quiz.  The student who wrote the most secure and elegant solution was awarded tons of extra credit.  Guess who won?  That's right, the guy who built abstractions from procedures.  The guy who used a cons list to input his questions.  The guy who read his FUQIN SICP.

I was completely blown away at how elegant and easy to understand his code was.  It made my code look like barf.  It made my code look like it was written in some bizarre dialect of a tribe of autistic pigmies. And it made me sort of embarrassed that I haven't read my SICP yet.

So to all of you out there who think that Scheme is just some toy language, take heed.


When I was wee lad, my mother would read to me every night before bed The Boy Who Read His FUQIN SICP. One night, I asked ``mother, I would like to be like that boy, would you read SICP to me, mother, please?'' to which she replied ``no son, read it yourself!.'' I read it then and every day of my childhood. Each day before after school playtime my mother would ask ``son, have you read your SICP today?'' At the age of 12, when all my peers were writing ANSI C compilers in ANSI C, I was implementing call/cc in my metacircular evaluator. While all the other kids asked ``HAV U RED DA FUCKIN STANDARD'' I would ask ``have you read your FUQIN SICP?''