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Computer Science students would greatly benefit from an introductory-level course in the two of the most historically influential languages -- LISP and Smalltal

by gjvc 5y ago

Computer Science students would greatly benefit from an introductory-level course in the two of the most historically influential languages -- LISP and Smalltalk. Emacs as an editor does take effort to learn, and it's a different type of effort from all the other editors you mention, because they are all quite different beasts. In the end, it comes down to pedagogical considerations and how each individual learns. Emacs has suffered by having an awfully austere default installation, and Linux distributions have refrained from delivering a version with something like Doom or Prelude to make it more approachable. (Prelude is my favourite.)

Jtsummers 5y ago
Not always with those two languages, but in many CS curricula in the US there is a "programming languages" course that covers between 4 and 10 [0] languages in different language families. Prolog and Common Lisp (or Scheme) are typically included, you may get Smalltalk in there depending on the school. It's brief, because it's one course, but it's usually a 3rd year course so students should be competent programmers by then (that is, an Algorithms 101 course but in Lisp would be a slog for them). Other schools make a point (or made, not sure the current state) of changing languages between courses in the first couple years and giving more choice to students later. Like, an OO course would have been taught with Smalltalk after an intro algorithms/data structures course sequence using Java, Python, or other languages. A compilers course may have used SML, but it wasn't an SML course, just a compilers course that happened to use SML. [0] The most I've seen, it was absurdly paced, an intern was taking that one.
- gjvc 5y ago
  You'd certainly want to avoid spreading yourself too thin, which is why I specifically limited my hypothetical first-year module to these two languages, as they would provide the (IMHO) ideal context for learning the rest.

by gjvc 5y ago

Jtsummers 5y ago

Not always with those two languages, but in many CS curricula in the US there is a "programming languages" course that covers between 4 and 10 [0] languages in different language families. Prolog and Common Lisp (or Scheme) are typically included, you may get Smalltalk in there depending on the school. It's brief, because it's one course, but it's usually a 3rd year course so students should be competent programmers by then (that is, an Algorithms 101 course but in Lisp would be a slog for them). Other schools make a point (or made, not sure the current state) of changing languages between courses in the first couple years and giving more choice to students later. Like, an OO course would have been taught with Smalltalk after an intro algorithms/data structures course sequence using Java, Python, or other languages. A compilers course may have used SML, but it wasn't an SML course, just a compilers course that happened to use SML. [0] The most I've seen, it was absurdly paced, an intern was taking that one.

gjvc 5y ago
You'd certainly want to avoid spreading yourself too thin, which is why I specifically limited my hypothetical first-year module to these two languages, as they would provide the (IMHO) ideal context for learning the rest.