Today's links

_posts/2025-03-05-links.md

@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+---
+title:  "Turing award for RL, Solving SICP"
+date:   2025-03-05
+tags: links computer-science reinforcemnet-learning textbook
+---
+
+## Reinfocement learning pioneers receive Turing award
+
+Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton[^1] [receive the 2024 Turing award](https://awards.acm.org/about/2024-turing) for their groundbreaking work on [reinforcement learning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_learning).
+Even with today's focus on [LLM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model)s and 'generative AI', reinforcement learning plays an important role, e.g. as the 'RL' part of [RLHF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_learning_from_human_feedback).
+I still remember how much I enjoyed their classic textbook on the subject (_Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction_) as a PhD student; it's [freely available](http://incompleteideas.net/book/the-book-2nd.html)[^2] and one of my all-time favorite computer science books.
+If you would rather _watch_ something on the topic, the [AlphaGo documentary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6gekU1Y) is a nice showcase on how these ideas (combined with neural networks and _lots_ of compute power) can be successfully applied to problems [Go](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)), a wonderful board game that was previously thought 'unsolvable'.
+
+## SICP "100% speedrun"
+
+On a related note _also_  concerning famous computer science textbooks, here is [a nice breakdown from 2021](https://lockywolf.wordpress.com/2021/02/08/solving-sicp/) (via [HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43257963)) of the time it takes to _fully_ work through [_Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_of_Computer_Programs) (by Abelson, Sussman, and Sussman), colloquially known as SICP: roughly 729 hours, or almost 20 weeks of full-time work! 🤯
+
+---
+
+[^1]: Also, of ["The Bitter Lesson"](http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html) fame.
+
+[^2]: This is the 'new' second edition that's already seven years old (the first edition is from 1998). Wow, time flies.