This is kind of sad, like an english department no longer teaching Shakespeare because it is written in archaic language and can't hold the student's interest.

This is kind of sad, like an english department no longer teaching Shakespeare because it is written in archaic language and can't hold the student's interest. But computer science isn't like english, so I guess it is a bit of false analogy. Fortunately the text and lectures are available for free online, so there is nothing to prevent the curious student from digging in. edit: now that I've more time to reflect, I want to revise my thoughts... I would be pretty pissed I was handed dive into python or something similar as my freshman programming text at a college like MIT or Berkley. I would hope that most CS majors wouldn't be going to into one of the top CS programs in the country cold, having never written a line of code. This is in no way meant to disparage Dive into Python or similar books, but it is something you can read on your own over the course of a week or two. If you aren't going into CS at a top uni to study the hard shit like SCIP, I don't really see the point.