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I used SICP too. And I'm very dubious that Scheme reduces the gap. People still had radically different experiences in the course depending on their prior expos
by ef4 11y ago
I used SICP too. And I'm very dubious that Scheme reduces the gap. People still had radically different experiences in the course depending on their prior exposure to programming.
The biggest gap I observed was in motivating _why_ we were doing anything. The whole theme of the course is using abstractions to tame complexity. But beginners had never encountered real program complexity before, and it's not an easy thing to simulate in an introductory course as they're usually done.
- visarga 11y agoI'd say they need to tackle simple naive solutions first, in order to develop a taste for abstraction, not the other way around. You can't appreciate an abstraction unless you feel the pain point it helps attenuate.
- Thriptic 11y agoI agree. I'm making my way through the adaptation of SICP written for python currently and it has been an absolute game changer, but I never would have appreciated it without struggling to construct "larger" projects on my own with little abstraction.
- afarrell 11y ago> though the adaptation of SICP written for python. Do you have a link to this? A quick google didn't seem to turn up anything that was obviously what you were referring to.
- Thriptic 11y agohttp://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/sp12/book/ http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/sp12/book/