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Comment by hyeonwho4 | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately, the code in this book uses a modified version of scheme which is no longer maintained.

There is a racket port; I do not know how complete it is, though a quick look at the open issues suggests not all the pieces are there yet: https://github.com/bennn/mechanics

The most recent version of `scmutils` I see is from 2016: https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6946/linux-instal... and https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6946/scmutils-tar...

Edit: There seems to be quite a few ports to various languages: https://github.com/search?q=scmutils No idea how many are fully featured/tested.

Looks like MIT Scheme (on which the ScmUtils system runs) still gets some regular maintainence releases, though I don't know how active development is these days:

https://www.gnu.org/software/mit-scheme/ https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mit-scheme/stable.pkg/

Installation instructions for the ScmUtils package:

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6946/index.html

As far as I know, Gerry and Jack still teach the course every year (can someone currently at MIT verify?) and still use the system.

I had assumed it was being done in Python https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14167453

Nope, that's just the 'intro to programming' class. The class for this book is "Classical Mechanics: A Computational Approach" (I think) and it's definitely still taught in Scheme.

While I'm glad to hear that, how does that work given that the students presumably won't have been taught Scheme from SCIP beforehand? Is it just a given that students taking the class learned Scheme on their own?

Thanks, I had assumed the intro class changing would signal a comprehensive shift.

Yep! https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6.945/

I'm in his group at MIT.

Good to hear! Please say hi to everyone. I used to hang out in the group back when it was still at Tech^2.

I maintain a port to Clojure https://github.com/littleredcomputer/sicmutils

I haven't done much with it recently but have plans in the back of my mind for when I have more free time.

Thanks, this is a nice port!

I worked through SICM using sicmutils as a backup. The MIT Scheme version sometimes "locked up" on my solutions to exercises and sicmutils did not (the Foucault pendulum problem comes to mind).

This video is an introduction to SICM and sicmutils:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PoajCqNKpg

I'm so glad it was helpful.

We have some Jupyter notebooks, e.g. https://github.com/littleredcomputer/sicmutils/blob/master/j...

One on the Foucault pendulum sounds like it would make a nice addition. Perhaps it could be done in a way that wouldn't spoil the exercise.

I agree, the Foucault example would make a good Juypter demonstration. Showing the pendulum in 3D with a 2D projection (like a Spirograph) of the motion on the ground would be especially nice, as in:

https://demonstrations.wolfram.com/FoucaultsPendulum/

This might be possible in a Jupyter notebook with WebGL.

Your video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PoajCqNKpg ?

that isn’t true. you can go install it now on linux, mac os x, or windows subsytem for linux, and it runs just fine. and it still gets some updates.

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