8 ms·

Why We Should Teach Python instead of Racket

36 points by albertoCaroM 6y ago

acheron 6y ago
Note: the title is overstated, this is actually a pretty good discussion of Racket and not just the kind of bashing you would think from a title “I hate Racket”.
seibelj 6y ago
Could not agree more. Top schools like MIT gave up on their silly dedication to obscure languages in introductory programming classes and switched to Python. It seems like there was a generation of professors who decided there was a “correct” way to teach computer science and it involved languages completely isolated from the mainstream industry. It’s like teaching someone grammar by forcing them to use Esperanto because it’s “The Best” language (according to tenured professor who doesn’t give a shit about their students). All Turing complete languages can execute any program. The fundamentals of programming exist in all languages. Teach students using languages with the absolute minimal friction so they aren’t spooked in their first exposure to programming. Academia has scared away an untold number of aspiring students with their nonsense languages. Such a damn waste of talent. The absolute worst programmers in terms of craftsmen-ship are academics - if you want to see some truly WTF code look at what underpins research papers.
- naasking 6y ago
  That's ridiculous. It's computer science, not computer programming technician. You teach with the tool that most clearly distills the principles of what you're trying to teach. Racket and Scheme arguably do that much better than Python. In fact, Racket 15 years ago still has more cutting edge features than Python has to this day. There is simply no language that provides the breadth of features available in Racket, and I don't even use it. > Academia has scared away an untold number of aspiring students with their nonsense languages A programmer that's scared or intimidated by learning a new language does not belong in this industry. You might as well say that we should coddle civil engineering students that are scared of computers. If this is a barrier you can't surmount, consider another career.
  - seibelj 6y ago
    You can teach the principles of computer science without forcing some obscure and difficult language on new programmers. Learning programming is hard enough, no need to add more bullshit on top of it!
    - non-entity 6y ago
      What is particularly more difficult about Racket, other tha maybe using a paradigm you are not familiar with?
      - seibelj 6y ago
        Did you read the linked article? It is a pretty thorough explanation along with surveys of students. Only 22% liked racket!
        naasking 6y ago
        So most people who know almost nothing about programming hate Racket. Can't say I find that compelling.
        kyawzazaw 6y ago
        But they prefer Python. I think we need to note that the specific population you are referring to is directly the ones who are being affected. It might also be a good idea to consider their input.
        StreamBright 6y ago
        I remember in high school when only 20% of my class liked math. We should stop teaching math, right?
  - geofft 6y ago
    I thought the person that you're replying to made a very good point about Esperanto. Why do we teach linguistics with messy real-world languages instead of conlangs that most clearly distill the principles we want to teach?
- craigsmansion 6y ago
  > It’s like teaching someone grammar by forcing them to use Esperanto Or Latin, which for the longest time wasn't called "Latin", but simply something that was taught in "grammar school", because it addresses the underlying fundamentals quite clearly without getting bogged down with semantics. Latin is still used for that, btw, but only in "top schools". >Teach students using languages with the absolute minimal friction Say, something with a trivial syntax; something that is easy to express any construct in without too many preconceptions of what a programming language should look like. If only there was a language like that!
  - seibelj 6y ago
    You have an ivory tower elite mindset. My mindset is to actually help students learn and get excited without being scared on day 1. Save whatever functional nonsense you want to teach for “Obscure Languages 401” class. CS101 should be getting people into programming and teaching them using languages that they can actually do stuff with. If you teach someone python they can do statistical analysis and have a huge number of libraries to start making fun projects with. Teach them Scheme and they switch to the school of communications.
    - craigsmansion 6y ago
      > Save whatever functional nonsense you want to teach for “Obscure Languages 401” class. Do you also talk to your students like that when, say, one of them mentions an interest in different languages or mentions anything that doesn't agree with your "mindset"? > using languages that they can actually do stuff with Didn't you just state: "The fundamentals of programming exist in all languages." ? I was only commenting on your "minimal friction" that scheme naturally provides and how elegantly fundamentals can be demonstrated by it (right up to and including meta-circular evaluators).
  - geofft 6y ago
    If your argument is that teaching Scheme is as good an idea as teaching Latin, I think there will be no disagreement....
skillpass 6y ago
Full disclosure - I took 3 classes in Racket: Intro to CS, Programming Languages, and Compilers. > Racket is not a very popular language in teaching communities This list of schools with introductory Racket classes isn't accurate, because the author did not look beyond the naming of the courses on the Github page. My school was missed. > Students are unlikely to have had prior experience with Racket This is good because it means students from varying backgrounds of programming experience start from a level playing field. > Racket’s aesthetic beauty has limited relevance to CS1 Computer Science is first and foremost an ivory tower and students are (imo) better off being confronted with this fact up front. Software Engineering is probably better taught with a more practical language. > Students do not use Racket again later in their degree At my school the Programming Languages core curriculum all used Racket. A good percentage of students funneled into at least the first PL-core class as part of their requirements. The class was very popular. > Students do not like Racket Sorry, but I don't think we should base our decisions on what Intro students like/dislike. People hate leaving their comfort zone - that doesn't mean they shouldn't be pushed out of it. > The Design Recipe Is Not Well-Evidenced Valid criticisms. On the other hand, no evidence is presented that other languages are better.
- ampdepolymerase 6y ago
  There is no reason computer science needs to be steeped in academia. The only reason why it is so popular in the first place is because it is so practical and applied. Easy to profit from. If you worship your ivory towers, feel free to become a mathematician.
  - wodenokoto 6y ago
    I think computer science has every reason to be steeped in academia.
    - ampdepolymerase 6y ago
      By your logic, the creators of PageRank should have chased after the tenureship rat race like every upstanding academic instead of trying to commercialise.
hedora 6y ago
Python is a terrible choice as a first language. Idiomatic python is just glue code that obfuscates the underlying algorithms. Object oriented programming (implementation inheritance) is increasingly regarded as an antipattern, and it encourages that too. The massive performance penalty of writing logic in python vs calling out to external libraries mostly forces developers to program by lego-brick assembling external modules instead of reasoning about algorithm design. There’s no concept of types, either, and instead of attempting to detect programming errors early on, it leaves them to runtime. It’s not surprising that Java and also C/C++ are more popular than python for introductory CS courses. (I could see using python as an intro course for non-CS majors, fwiw.)
- zwaps 6y ago
  Object oriented programming is an antipattern? Can you explain this? I am not a CS major, but I find using classes quite useful.
  - DeathArrow 6y ago
    I suggest searching google for "problems with object oriented programming". There have been countless discussions, articles and videos. Examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM1iUe6IofM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM1iUe6IofM https://medium.com/machine-words/the-rise-and-fall-of-object-oriented-programming-d67078f970e2 https://medium.com/machine-words/the-rise-and-fall-of-object... https://medium.com/@cscalfani/goodbye-object-oriented-programming-a59cda4c0e53 https://medium.com/@cscalfani/goodbye-object-oriented-progra...
  - h8hawk 6y ago
    These articles are very good on topic: http://loup-vaillant.fr/articles/deaths-of-oop http://loup-vaillant.fr/articles/deaths-of-oop https://medium.com/javascript-scene/the-forgotten-history-of-oop-88d71b9b2d9f https://medium.com/javascript-scene/the-forgotten-history-of... https://www.yegor256.com/2016/08/15/what-is-wrong-object-oriented-programming.html https://www.yegor256.com/2016/08/15/what-is-wrong-object-ori...
- andreilys 6y ago
Xophmeister 6y ago
I write Python, amongst other things, professionally and have been playing with Racket in the sidelines. I recently started a new project and decided to take the plunge and write it entirely in Racket, so I can actually learn it better: its (extensive) standard library, idioms, quirks, etc. in a real (rather than toy) engineering setting. Now I love Racket. Whether it’s Racket, or Scheme, or Racket facilitating Scheme, it doesn’t matter, I haven’t had so much fun coding for a long long time! Of course my job isn’t concerned about my enjoyment (at least not primarily), but it turned out to be no harder to code the project than it would have been in Python. I’m heavily biased towards functional style and I appreciate that this is completely anecdotal, but I’d urge people to jump in :) It took me about a week to become productive in the language and, to be honest, most of that was getting over S-expression syntax and correctly pairing deeply nested parentheses. The documentation alone is a thing to behold! While it’s true that the community is smaller than Python’s, it’s friendly and eager to help; say on StackOverflow, r/Racket or IRC. I hope I can continue writing it professionally and can convince others in my team to adopt it.
- tartoran 6y ago
  Ive been programming for 20 years and recently started playing in racket and all my faded enthusiasm sprung back and got excited about programming again. Is it that its a new thing to me and we like new shiny things? Well, I find thats not the case. To me it feels that I can express ideas/idioms much much easier within Racket/scheme and after a few weeks i started enjoying the parens quite a bit. I’ve also been playing with htdp libraries and it’s been quite fun, simple and effective. My new personal projects are going to be in Racket now.
rgoulter 6y ago
"Which programming language" to start with is something people can have strong opinions on. (e.g. I could understand people saying C is a great language to start with, or that C is a terrible language to start with). There are always going to be reasons why any language will be bad as a first language to learn. I'm sure there will be reasons why a language would be a good one to learn. Python is a nice language to start with. I think Racket is a nice language to start with, too. The intro to programming course I took was loosely based off of SICP. (My batch was the last taught using Scheme; the next was taught the same material using a subset of JavaScript). As an example of something nicer about Racket than Python: There was a nice 'simplicity' to the material. A list is either empty, or some item followed by a list. Computing stuff either deals with a base case, or deals with a recursive case. Almost all the functions we used (car, cdr, map, accumulate, member, etc.) could be implemented with what we'd learned. -- This feels more analogous to seeing how the proof works rather than learning just a bunch of formulae.
credit_guy 6y ago
Being in lock-down mode, I thought it would be a good time to finish reading (and doing) the "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" that I started many years ago and abandoned. Ever since I read Paul Graham's essays on Lisp, I dreamed that I'd like to be able do build domain specific languages "when I grow up". Life always gets in the way, but I now decided to give Lisp another chance. And now this. Hm, should I abandon SICP again? Maybe the guy is right that beyond all the grand philosophizing of the amazing power of Lisp there's little substance. On the other hand, I also know the website I'm posting this comment on is built on Lisp. I'm torn.
- jbotz 6y ago
  That's not what he's saying at all. He's saying that it may not be the right language for an intro CS course for typical freshmen. One can argue back and forth about that. But if you want to learn deeper concepts about programming that go beyond a typical intro to CS class, SCIP is a great book and Scheme a great language, and I'm sure the author of this article would agree 100%.
- craigsmansion 6y ago
  Unfortunately SICP isn't really all that suitable for learning Scheme (or Lisp).
- oldsj 6y ago
  Check out Composing Programs for an SICP in Python https://composingprograms.com https://composingprograms.com
StreamBright 6y ago
>>>> Specific, formal survey question (T/F style): “Please Indicate if you like and are comfortable with each of the following languages:” Java: 93% C/C++: 74% Python: 38% JavaScript: 21% Racket: 7% This is absolutely hilarious. Students are comfortable with C/C++ and Java the most. I guess they haven't seen segmentation faults and null pointer exceptions enough in production ruining businesses yet. It is kind of funny how almost all of my peers who studied CS ended up wanting to work on ML languages (F#, OCaml, Haskell, etc.) after spending 10+ years with Java, C, C++ or C#. At the time they were learning Prolog and SML they did not like it much. This survey should be done after some time spent on deploying production ready applications for living and see how it will change.
DeathArrow 6y ago
We did CS courses in C and C++ 22 years ago. I recently did an MsC program at the same University and most courses are being done using Java. But for assignments teachers allow any programming language - if the task permits - so I did mine in C#. Some colleagues used Java, one guy used Python.
- kyawzazaw 6y ago
  How did they handle grading?
  - belval 6y ago
    Not the commenter you were replying to, but at my uni it's usually feature based. Basically, you are evaluated on whether your code accomplished the task and not code quality. I've never heard of people having that choice in intro classes though.
michaelmrose 6y ago
This entire post utterly strains credulity. It has the vibe of a bad Facebook post that your relatives shares that makes you groan. Halfway through I find myself doubting not merely the authors thesis but wondering if it's meant to poke fun or entertain. Can statements like >The hardest thing to capture in this site is the trauma in some students’ eyes. > I have also seen first-hand the trauma that it has caused students. possibly be meant seriously? Was racket the wrong tool to teach programming or did it eat their dog and set fire to their dorm? I picture Michael Keaton appearing after Geena Davis says c++ c++ c++ saying wait until they get a load of me. Everything has a certain amount of cognitive overhead. Perceptively python and racket both have fairly low overhead and quick feedback and ought to be in the same ballpark insofar as learning basics. I wonder if discontent as described derives from dissimilarity with existing material. A person with some knowledge but not much may be disproportionately dissatisfied with not being able to use such. Speculating that the best students have no problem, the worst students blame the instructor or the materials, the bottom middling who know a little python or Javascript are frustrated that they cannot benefit from existing skills. Students perception of value of instruction may be a useful metric for the school insofar as attracting students but one questions if the students are the best qualified at the start of their education to access the value of individual components of their education.
willswire 6y ago
Great read. I’m a senior studying comp sci at University of Delaware, and I couldn’t agree more! We learned Racket freshmen year - and I can confidently say that Racket had no perceivable advantage to my computer science education over any other language. In fact, the course introduced python towards the end of the semester which made it more of a headache since we had to take a final exam in both syntaxes. It would’ve been better to have used python from the start.
kyawzazaw 6y ago
I think most people here are commenting as graduates/professional so I thought I would chime in. As a student, I love being taught in Python for introductory CS classes. I have been a course assistant as well. The language is easy to pick and has great/easy applications that doesn't require learning another additional language. (I am not opposed to learning another and carry the sentiment that you can relatively pick up another language.) The second part is important to me as a student because I can quickly use it in my web programming projects, in my data-related projects and for scripting purposes as well(I admit I rarely do this).

36 points by albertoCaroM 6y ago

Note: the title is overstated, this is actually a pretty good discussion of Racket and not just the kind of bashing you would think from a title “I hate Racket”.

seibelj 6y ago

Could not agree more. Top schools like MIT gave up on their silly dedication to obscure languages in introductory programming classes and switched to Python. It seems like there was a generation of professors who decided there was a “correct” way to teach computer science and it involved languages completely isolated from the mainstream industry. It’s like teaching someone grammar by forcing them to use Esperanto because it’s “The Best” language (according to tenured professor who doesn’t give a shit about their students). All Turing complete languages can execute any program. The fundamentals of programming exist in all languages. Teach students using languages with the absolute minimal friction so they aren’t spooked in their first exposure to programming. Academia has scared away an untold number of aspiring students with their nonsense languages. Such a damn waste of talent. The absolute worst programmers in terms of craftsmen-ship are academics - if you want to see some truly WTF code look at what underpins research papers.

naasking 6y ago
That's ridiculous. It's computer science, not computer programming technician. You teach with the tool that most clearly distills the principles of what you're trying to teach. Racket and Scheme arguably do that much better than Python. In fact, Racket 15 years ago still has more cutting edge features than Python has to this day. There is simply no language that provides the breadth of features available in Racket, and I don't even use it. > Academia has scared away an untold number of aspiring students with their nonsense languages A programmer that's scared or intimidated by learning a new language does not belong in this industry. You might as well say that we should coddle civil engineering students that are scared of computers. If this is a barrier you can't surmount, consider another career.
- seibelj 6y ago
  You can teach the principles of computer science without forcing some obscure and difficult language on new programmers. Learning programming is hard enough, no need to add more bullshit on top of it!
  - non-entity 6y ago
    What is particularly more difficult about Racket, other tha maybe using a paradigm you are not familiar with?
    - seibelj 6y ago
      Did you read the linked article? It is a pretty thorough explanation along with surveys of students. Only 22% liked racket!
      - naasking 6y ago
        So most people who know almost nothing about programming hate Racket. Can't say I find that compelling.
        kyawzazaw 6y ago
        But they prefer Python. I think we need to note that the specific population you are referring to is directly the ones who are being affected. It might also be a good idea to consider their input.
      - StreamBright 6y ago
        I remember in high school when only 20% of my class liked math. We should stop teaching math, right?
- geofft 6y ago
  I thought the person that you're replying to made a very good point about Esperanto. Why do we teach linguistics with messy real-world languages instead of conlangs that most clearly distill the principles we want to teach?
craigsmansion 6y ago
> It’s like teaching someone grammar by forcing them to use Esperanto Or Latin, which for the longest time wasn't called "Latin", but simply something that was taught in "grammar school", because it addresses the underlying fundamentals quite clearly without getting bogged down with semantics. Latin is still used for that, btw, but only in "top schools". >Teach students using languages with the absolute minimal friction Say, something with a trivial syntax; something that is easy to express any construct in without too many preconceptions of what a programming language should look like. If only there was a language like that!
- seibelj 6y ago
  You have an ivory tower elite mindset. My mindset is to actually help students learn and get excited without being scared on day 1. Save whatever functional nonsense you want to teach for “Obscure Languages 401” class. CS101 should be getting people into programming and teaching them using languages that they can actually do stuff with. If you teach someone python they can do statistical analysis and have a huge number of libraries to start making fun projects with. Teach them Scheme and they switch to the school of communications.
  - craigsmansion 6y ago
    > Save whatever functional nonsense you want to teach for “Obscure Languages 401” class. Do you also talk to your students like that when, say, one of them mentions an interest in different languages or mentions anything that doesn't agree with your "mindset"? > using languages that they can actually do stuff with Didn't you just state: "The fundamentals of programming exist in all languages." ? I was only commenting on your "minimal friction" that scheme naturally provides and how elegantly fundamentals can be demonstrated by it (right up to and including meta-circular evaluators).
- geofft 6y ago
  If your argument is that teaching Scheme is as good an idea as teaching Latin, I think there will be no disagreement....

skillpass 6y ago

Full disclosure - I took 3 classes in Racket: Intro to CS, Programming Languages, and Compilers. > Racket is not a very popular language in teaching communities This list of schools with introductory Racket classes isn't accurate, because the author did not look beyond the naming of the courses on the Github page. My school was missed. > Students are unlikely to have had prior experience with Racket This is good because it means students from varying backgrounds of programming experience start from a level playing field. > Racket’s aesthetic beauty has limited relevance to CS1 Computer Science is first and foremost an ivory tower and students are (imo) better off being confronted with this fact up front. Software Engineering is probably better taught with a more practical language. > Students do not use Racket again later in their degree At my school the Programming Languages core curriculum all used Racket. A good percentage of students funneled into at least the first PL-core class as part of their requirements. The class was very popular. > Students do not like Racket Sorry, but I don't think we should base our decisions on what Intro students like/dislike. People hate leaving their comfort zone - that doesn't mean they shouldn't be pushed out of it. > The Design Recipe Is Not Well-Evidenced Valid criticisms. On the other hand, no evidence is presented that other languages are better.

ampdepolymerase 6y ago
There is no reason computer science needs to be steeped in academia. The only reason why it is so popular in the first place is because it is so practical and applied. Easy to profit from. If you worship your ivory towers, feel free to become a mathematician.
- wodenokoto 6y ago
  I think computer science has every reason to be steeped in academia.
  - ampdepolymerase 6y ago
    By your logic, the creators of PageRank should have chased after the tenureship rat race like every upstanding academic instead of trying to commercialise.

hedora 6y ago

Python is a terrible choice as a first language. Idiomatic python is just glue code that obfuscates the underlying algorithms. Object oriented programming (implementation inheritance) is increasingly regarded as an antipattern, and it encourages that too. The massive performance penalty of writing logic in python vs calling out to external libraries mostly forces developers to program by lego-brick assembling external modules instead of reasoning about algorithm design. There’s no concept of types, either, and instead of attempting to detect programming errors early on, it leaves them to runtime. It’s not surprising that Java and also C/C++ are more popular than python for introductory CS courses. (I could see using python as an intro course for non-CS majors, fwiw.)

zwaps 6y ago
Object oriented programming is an antipattern? Can you explain this? I am not a CS major, but I find using classes quite useful.
- DeathArrow 6y ago
  I suggest searching google for "problems with object oriented programming". There have been countless discussions, articles and videos. Examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM1iUe6IofM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM1iUe6IofM https://medium.com/machine-words/the-rise-and-fall-of-object-oriented-programming-d67078f970e2 https://medium.com/machine-words/the-rise-and-fall-of-object... https://medium.com/@cscalfani/goodbye-object-oriented-programming-a59cda4c0e53 https://medium.com/@cscalfani/goodbye-object-oriented-progra...
- h8hawk 6y ago
  These articles are very good on topic: http://loup-vaillant.fr/articles/deaths-of-oop http://loup-vaillant.fr/articles/deaths-of-oop https://medium.com/javascript-scene/the-forgotten-history-of-oop-88d71b9b2d9f https://medium.com/javascript-scene/the-forgotten-history-of... https://www.yegor256.com/2016/08/15/what-is-wrong-object-oriented-programming.html https://www.yegor256.com/2016/08/15/what-is-wrong-object-ori...
andreilys 6y ago

Xophmeister 6y ago

I write Python, amongst other things, professionally and have been playing with Racket in the sidelines. I recently started a new project and decided to take the plunge and write it entirely in Racket, so I can actually learn it better: its (extensive) standard library, idioms, quirks, etc. in a real (rather than toy) engineering setting. Now I love Racket. Whether it’s Racket, or Scheme, or Racket facilitating Scheme, it doesn’t matter, I haven’t had so much fun coding for a long long time! Of course my job isn’t concerned about my enjoyment (at least not primarily), but it turned out to be no harder to code the project than it would have been in Python. I’m heavily biased towards functional style and I appreciate that this is completely anecdotal, but I’d urge people to jump in :) It took me about a week to become productive in the language and, to be honest, most of that was getting over S-expression syntax and correctly pairing deeply nested parentheses. The documentation alone is a thing to behold! While it’s true that the community is smaller than Python’s, it’s friendly and eager to help; say on StackOverflow, r/Racket or IRC. I hope I can continue writing it professionally and can convince others in my team to adopt it.

tartoran 6y ago
Ive been programming for 20 years and recently started playing in racket and all my faded enthusiasm sprung back and got excited about programming again. Is it that its a new thing to me and we like new shiny things? Well, I find thats not the case. To me it feels that I can express ideas/idioms much much easier within Racket/scheme and after a few weeks i started enjoying the parens quite a bit. I’ve also been playing with htdp libraries and it’s been quite fun, simple and effective. My new personal projects are going to be in Racket now.

rgoulter 6y ago

"Which programming language" to start with is something people can have strong opinions on. (e.g. I could understand people saying C is a great language to start with, or that C is a terrible language to start with). There are always going to be reasons why any language will be bad as a first language to learn. I'm sure there will be reasons why a language would be a good one to learn. Python is a nice language to start with. I think Racket is a nice language to start with, too. The intro to programming course I took was loosely based off of SICP. (My batch was the last taught using Scheme; the next was taught the same material using a subset of JavaScript). As an example of something nicer about Racket than Python: There was a nice 'simplicity' to the material. A list is either empty, or some item followed by a list. Computing stuff either deals with a base case, or deals with a recursive case. Almost all the functions we used (car, cdr, map, accumulate, member, etc.) could be implemented with what we'd learned. -- This feels more analogous to seeing how the proof works rather than learning just a bunch of formulae.

credit_guy 6y ago

Being in lock-down mode, I thought it would be a good time to finish reading (and doing) the "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" that I started many years ago and abandoned. Ever since I read Paul Graham's essays on Lisp, I dreamed that I'd like to be able do build domain specific languages "when I grow up". Life always gets in the way, but I now decided to give Lisp another chance. And now this. Hm, should I abandon SICP again? Maybe the guy is right that beyond all the grand philosophizing of the amazing power of Lisp there's little substance. On the other hand, I also know the website I'm posting this comment on is built on Lisp. I'm torn.

jbotz 6y ago
That's not what he's saying at all. He's saying that it may not be the right language for an intro CS course for typical freshmen. One can argue back and forth about that. But if you want to learn deeper concepts about programming that go beyond a typical intro to CS class, SCIP is a great book and Scheme a great language, and I'm sure the author of this article would agree 100%.
craigsmansion 6y ago
Unfortunately SICP isn't really all that suitable for learning Scheme (or Lisp).
oldsj 6y ago
Check out Composing Programs for an SICP in Python https://composingprograms.com https://composingprograms.com

StreamBright 6y ago

>>>> Specific, formal survey question (T/F style): “Please Indicate if you like and are comfortable with each of the following languages:” Java: 93% C/C++: 74% Python: 38% JavaScript: 21% Racket: 7% This is absolutely hilarious. Students are comfortable with C/C++ and Java the most. I guess they haven't seen segmentation faults and null pointer exceptions enough in production ruining businesses yet. It is kind of funny how almost all of my peers who studied CS ended up wanting to work on ML languages (F#, OCaml, Haskell, etc.) after spending 10+ years with Java, C, C++ or C#. At the time they were learning Prolog and SML they did not like it much. This survey should be done after some time spent on deploying production ready applications for living and see how it will change.

DeathArrow 6y ago

We did CS courses in C and C++ 22 years ago. I recently did an MsC program at the same University and most courses are being done using Java. But for assignments teachers allow any programming language - if the task permits - so I did mine in C#. Some colleagues used Java, one guy used Python.

kyawzazaw 6y ago
How did they handle grading?
- belval 6y ago
  Not the commenter you were replying to, but at my uni it's usually feature based. Basically, you are evaluated on whether your code accomplished the task and not code quality. I've never heard of people having that choice in intro classes though.

michaelmrose 6y ago

This entire post utterly strains credulity. It has the vibe of a bad Facebook post that your relatives shares that makes you groan. Halfway through I find myself doubting not merely the authors thesis but wondering if it's meant to poke fun or entertain. Can statements like >The hardest thing to capture in this site is the trauma in some students’ eyes. > I have also seen first-hand the trauma that it has caused students. possibly be meant seriously? Was racket the wrong tool to teach programming or did it eat their dog and set fire to their dorm? I picture Michael Keaton appearing after Geena Davis says c++ c++ c++ saying wait until they get a load of me. Everything has a certain amount of cognitive overhead. Perceptively python and racket both have fairly low overhead and quick feedback and ought to be in the same ballpark insofar as learning basics. I wonder if discontent as described derives from dissimilarity with existing material. A person with some knowledge but not much may be disproportionately dissatisfied with not being able to use such. Speculating that the best students have no problem, the worst students blame the instructor or the materials, the bottom middling who know a little python or Javascript are frustrated that they cannot benefit from existing skills. Students perception of value of instruction may be a useful metric for the school insofar as attracting students but one questions if the students are the best qualified at the start of their education to access the value of individual components of their education.

willswire 6y ago

Great read. I’m a senior studying comp sci at University of Delaware, and I couldn’t agree more! We learned Racket freshmen year - and I can confidently say that Racket had no perceivable advantage to my computer science education over any other language. In fact, the course introduced python towards the end of the semester which made it more of a headache since we had to take a final exam in both syntaxes. It would’ve been better to have used python from the start.

kyawzazaw 6y ago

I think most people here are commenting as graduates/professional so I thought I would chime in. As a student, I love being taught in Python for introductory CS classes. I have been a course assistant as well. The language is easy to pick and has great/easy applications that doesn't require learning another additional language. (I am not opposed to learning another and carry the sentiment that you can relatively pick up another language.) The second part is important to me as a student because I can quickly use it in my web programming projects, in my data-related projects and for scripting purposes as well(I admit I rarely do this).