So I was lounging around the local university library, as is considered normal for NEET, and I found a hard cover copy of the first edition of SICP. The paper that gets stamped with the due date is last marked in... 1997. it pains me to see such a magnificent tomb sit abandoned between a bunch of decaying 1970's journals on AI that are so fragile they belong in special collections, and a book called "The Magic Machine: A handbook of Computer Sourcery" (actually, that one is pretty neat).
Problem is, they have those annoying anti-theft detectors at the front to stop geniuses like me from setting information free, do I get the book out of the library where it has been ignored by foolish students for G-d knows how long and into my loving arms?
Name:
Anonymous2014-04-09 15:22
Okay, I liberated the book. The heist involved me going to the front desk and applying for what is called a "Inter-library Loan Card", where if I give them a different library card from an in-state public library, they are required to loan to me because they are owned by the state, which is unusually enlightened on the matter.
On the downside though, it would appear that some dipshit thought it would be funny to write notes in it.
On the first page, the words `conjure' and `arcane and esoteric' are underlined and defined in the margin as `to summon a devil' and `known by a few'. Then they go through the basic prefix math and write the answers for each parentheses. By 1.1.5 they are going through the procedures to point out the name and parameters with labels and arrows. After polluting the entire page exercise 1.1 is on with a not-to-terrible solution, he shuts up for a while, until he draws a mess of arrows to work out recursion and iteration. Early on in chapter 2, he has takes the time to define `polynomial', which makes me wonder what he was doing when the derivative algorithm in ch1 was going on. The last note is on symbolic differentiation, where he underlined many terms like `symbolic' and `differentiation' but does not define them. Beyond that, the rest of the book is pristine and clean, so it would appear that he did not last long.