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> Racket, as a full-featured dialect of Lisp, has an aggressively simple syntax. For a small fraction of students, this syntax is an impediment. To be blunt, if
by acbart 7y ago
> Racket, as a full-featured dialect of Lisp, has an aggressively simple syntax. For a small fraction of students, this syntax is an impediment. To be blunt, if these students have a fundamental mental barrier to accepting an alien syntactic regime even temporarily, they lack the mental dexterity to survive a career in computer science. Racket's powerful macro system and facilities for higher-order programming thoroughly erase the line between data and code. If taught correctly, Lisp liberates.
What a rude paragraph. I think this viewpoint is very unfortunate. I love functional programming, and I think everyone benefits from learning it, but this garbage attitude is toxic to students. The author cannot imagine a successful computer scientist who doesn't love the same PL paradigms as him. I would prefer to keep them away from my learners.
- Gene_Parmesan 7y ago> who doesn't love the same PL paradigms as him. I don't see that at all. It's not about enjoying it, it's about having the ability to adjust to the Lisp syntax, full stop. Given that Lisp is just about as close to programming directly in an AST as you can get, I'm not sure that claim of his is too far from the truth. Remember, we're talking about computer science, not programmers generally.
- namenotrequired 7y agoI don’t know why you’re being downvoted, you are correctly pointing out the GPs fallacious argumentation.
- ori_b 7y agoI didn't see anything in that quote about loving it -- just about being able to handle it temporarily. I deal daily with technology that I have don't enjoy, but have to accept temporarily. I wouldn't be fit for a career in computer science if I couldn't adapt to that.