SICP Cover Demystified - Conor Hoekstra - CppCon 2020

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SICP (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs) is "the best computer science book in the world." This lightning talk dives into what the cover of the infamous textbook really means.

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Conor is a Senior Library Software Engineer at NVIDIA working on the RAPIDS team. He is extremely passionate about programming languages, algorithms and beautiful code. He is the founder and organizer of the Programming Languages Virtual Meetup and he has a YouTube channel.

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[ArthurAGleckler]

I spoke with Jerry Sussman tonight and described this video. He hadn't seen it, but told the story of how Julie Sussman had visited a library at Harvard and, under the supervision of an armed guard, made photocopies of the page with the two alchemists from an old manuscript. He confirmed that that formed the basis of the cover, as suggested in the video. I asked him about other claims, e.g. that the two alchemists represented him and Hal, that the caliper represented the REPL, that the correspondence between the second letters of the names was deliberate, etc. He was surprised by all of them.

Does anyone know where these ideas came from?

By the way, calling Scheme an "interpreted language" is wrong on many levels. First, languages aren't interpreted — implementations are. And there have been excellent compilers for Scheme since 1978. Sure, there are lots of interpreters for Scheme, but that's largely because they're so easy to write. Chez Scheme, Chicken Scheme, Gambit Scheme, MIT Scheme, and others all have good compilers, and have for a long time.

I've posted this on /r/scheme, too.

[Daniel-rkvf]

Well done, Conor! Sincerely impressed with your detailed research. Nice talk.

[shooshx]

That's some quality content right there

[aristle_]

Hermes Trismegistus is derived from but very distinct from the greek god, he was a legendary figure more in alchemy and hermeticism (hence the name) and i encourage anyone watching to look into it themselves a bit more
this video strikes me as more of a straight faced joke but this is still important to know i think

[cosarara]

Pronunciation of Ramon Llull is [rəˈmoɲ ˈʎuʎ] and you'd generally refer to him by the last name when not giving the name in full, same as you'd call Einstein, Einstein, not Albert. Except Llull is probably impossible to pronounce for most English speakers 😅.
Great lightning talk, I'm glad you got trolled into giving it, and looking forward to the actual talk!

[FergalByrne]

Great forensics lolz. Your full talk was excellent.

[bcx]

I would NOT want to wear a pin calling me a grand wizard of anything

[Dempeokami]

Hmm do you have source for any of this?

3:30 - "It's basically confirmed at this point that Hermes is Sussman." Sounds rather like speculation than confirmation 🤷🏻‍♂️