0.0.1 第二版前言

Preface to the Second Edition

第二版前言

Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?

软件很可能确实与其他任何东西都不同，它的本意就是被抛弃：这一观点的全部就是总将它看作一个肥皂泡吗？

Alan J. Perlis

The material in this book has been the basis of MIT's entry-level computer science subject since 1980. We had been teaching this material for four years when the first edition was published, and twelve more years have elapsed until the appearance of this second edition. We are pleased that our work has been widely adopted and incorporated into other texts. We have seen our students take the ideas and programs in this book and build them in as the core of new computer systems and languages. In literal realization of an ancient Talmudic pun, our students have become our builders. We are lucky to have such capable students and such accomplished builders.

自 1980 年以来，本书的材料就一直在 MIT 作为计算机科学学科入门课程的基础。在本书第一版出版之前，我们已经用这一材料教了 4 年课，而到这个第二版出版，时间又过去了 12 年。我们非常高兴地看到这一工作被广泛接受，并被结合到其他一些教材中。我们已经看到自己的学生掌握了本书中的思想和程序，并将它们构筑到新的计算机系统或者语言的核心里。这就在文字上实现了一个古犹太教法法典的双关语，我们的学生已经变成了我们的创造者。我们非常幸运能有如此有能力的学生和如此有建树的创造者。

In preparing this edition, we have incorporated hundreds of clarifications suggested by our own teaching experience and the comments of colleagues at MIT and elsewhere. We have redesigned most of the major programming systems in the book, including the generic-arithmetic system, the interpreters, the register-machine simulator, and the compiler; and we have rewritten all the program examples to ensure that any Scheme implementation conforming to the IEEE Scheme standard (IEEE 1990) will be able to run the code.

在准备这一新版本的过程中，我们结合进了成百条澄清性的建议，它们来自我们自己的教学经验，也来自 MIT 和其他地方的同行们的评述。我们重新设计了本书里主要的程序设计系统中的大部分，包括通用型算术系统、解释器、寄存器机器模拟器和编译器，也重写了所有的程序实例，以保证任何符合 IEEE 的 Scheme 标准（IEEE 1990）的 Scheme 实现都能运行这些代码。

This edition emphasizes several new themes. The most important of these is the central role played by different approaches to dealing with time in computational models: objects with state, concurrent programming, functional programming, lazy evaluation, and nondeterministic programming. We have included new sections on concurrency and nondeterminism, and we have tried to integrate this theme throughout the book.

这一版本中强调了几个新问题，其中最重要的是有关在不同的途径中，计算模型里对于时间的处理所起的中心作用：带有状态的对象、并发程序设计、函数式程序设计、惰性求值和非确定性程序设计。这里为并发和非确定性新增加了几节，我们也设法将这一论题集成到整本书里，贯穿始终。

The first edition of the book closely followed the syllabus of our MIT one-semester subject. With all the new material in the second edition, it will not be possible to cover everything in a single semester, so the instructor will have to pick and choose. In our own teaching, we sometimes skip the section on logic programming (section 4.4), we have students use the register-machine simulator but we do not cover its implementation (section 5.2), and we give only a cursory overview of the compiler (section 5.5). Even so, this is still an intense course. Some instructors may wish to cover only the first three or four chapters, leaving the other material for subsequent courses.

本书第一版基本上是按照我们在 MIT 一学期课程的教学大纲撰写的。由于有了第二版中增加的这些新材料，在一个学期里覆盖所有内容已经不可能了，所以教师需要从中做一些选择。在我们自己的教学里，有时会跳过有关逻辑程序设计的第 4.4 节，让学生使用寄存器机器模拟器，但并不去讨论它的实现（第 5.2 节），对于编译器则只给出一个粗略的概述（第 5.5 节）。即使如此，这还是一个内容非常多的课程。一些教师可能希望只覆盖前面的三章或者四章，而将其他内容留给后续课程。

The World-Wide-Web site www-mitpress.mit.edu/sicp provides support for users of this book. This includes programs from the book, sample programming assignments, supplementary materials, and downloadable implementations of the Scheme dialect of Lisp.

万维网站点 www-mitpress.mit.edu/sicp 为本书的使用者提供支持。其中包含了取自本书的程序，示例程序作业、辅助材料和 Lisp 的 Scheme 方言的可下载实现。