I am ready to dive into Python (witty, witty), thanks to my shameless abuse of the university's print quota. Actually, it's hardly an abuse since they offer us a 1000 pages to print out whatever we want. But nonetheless, the act of printing out a whole book seems a bit excessive, and hence wasteful. Yet of course a book is worth far more than a tutorial sheet (let's see what I say to this come exam time - oh wait, it is exam time). Now I have no excuse not to read it - it's printed and just waiting to be read. Chances are of course that it will stay that way till the end of the year. Such is life.

But anyway, I wish I could print out The Structure And Interpretation Of Computer Programs. Also known as the bible of Scheme, and the greatest computer science textbook of the last 20 years. I can't quite explain my fascination with these sorts of books that are revered as being brilliant texts in the way of programming itself - the book, from what I've read, tries to use Scheme to push the reader onto the path of becoming a good computer scientist, not just a good Scheme programmer. Which is of course what we need today, texts that teach you more than syntax, that go beyond the details of a language and look at the high level issues that are arguably much more important.

A digression - are all Scheme programmers good? Or more generally, are all functional programmers good? Probably not, but they seem to be such an exclusive group that I'll wager that most of those who do program in such languages are really good. Just read some of the newsgroups on Lisp, those guys are crazy! After all, one must be reasonably motivated to choose such an obscure language paradigm - obscure in the modern day business sense. How many job offerings for Lisp programmers have you seen lately, hmm?

So is this all an attempt to apply the flawed logic of "If I were a Scheme programmer, I would be a good programmer"? Quite possibly, but I would like to think that I am trying to elevate my knowledge and understanding and become one, without the naive assumption that by merely learning Scheme I will magically transform. That ain't so bad, now is it?

On a related note, three volumes of The Art Of Computer Programming lie in a bookshelf in my house, never read once. Glanced at, yes, but never read. I wonder if I will ever be able to comprehend a whole chapter of this intriguing bible of computer science (everything seems to be a bible today). Knuth reminds me how little I truly know, both in mathematics and computer science. Is that a good thing?

Oh, why can't I print the book out, you ask? Because the chapters (and pages?) are individual HTML files, and the book is not available as a convenient PDF. It is available in printed form for US $75. A bit expensive, wouldn't you say?