6 ms·

i think the parent is well aware of the unpopularity of lisp. yet that does nothing to disprove that lisp is one of the most 'familiar things in programming'. a

i think the parent is well aware of the unpopularity of lisp. yet that does nothing to disprove that lisp is one of the most 'familiar things in programming'. almost all programmers who have attended some academic course on programming languages know about lisp

pphysch 5y ago
Perhaps true for past generations. Even MIT recently rewrote SICP in Javascript for its undergrads, IIRC.
- randomifcpfan 5y ago
  MIT also switched from Scheme to Python for undergraduate CS programming courses. They did it for the libraries and ease of use.
  - p_l 5y ago
    And because the goal of 6.01 was different from 6.001, which was the biggest thing in the change. A graduate of 6.001 was supposed to be on path to understand computation et al - a graduate of 6.01 is given enough skills to apply a bit of programming necessary for his next courses but isn't expected to actually grok programming, just string enough libraries together.
- medo-bear 5y ago
  im definitely not part of the past generation, but i get your point nonetheless. cs courses now are more focused on creating industry-ready developers than they are on creating solid academic programmers. in this sense cs courses now are much more vocational than they are academic. if we can agree on this difference between developers and programmers, then i still agree with the familiarity statement by the parent also by the way, the recently released follow-up to SICP [0] is still in very much in lisp, MIT Scheme to be specific (like the original SICP). however, this book is far from an introductory text in software engineering [0] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/software-design-flexibility https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/software-design-flexibility
oblio 5y ago
Not really, unless you go to a very small subset of top notch universities, in some geographies.

6 ms·

i think the parent is well aware of the unpopularity of lisp. yet that does nothing to disprove that lisp is one of the most 'familiar things in programming'. a

by medo-bear 5y ago

pphysch 5y ago
Perhaps true for past generations. Even MIT recently rewrote SICP in Javascript for its undergrads, IIRC.
- randomifcpfan 5y ago
  MIT also switched from Scheme to Python for undergraduate CS programming courses. They did it for the libraries and ease of use.
  - p_l 5y ago
    And because the goal of 6.01 was different from 6.001, which was the biggest thing in the change. A graduate of 6.001 was supposed to be on path to understand computation et al - a graduate of 6.01 is given enough skills to apply a bit of programming necessary for his next courses but isn't expected to actually grok programming, just string enough libraries together.
- medo-bear 5y ago
  im definitely not part of the past generation, but i get your point nonetheless. cs courses now are more focused on creating industry-ready developers than they are on creating solid academic programmers. in this sense cs courses now are much more vocational than they are academic. if we can agree on this difference between developers and programmers, then i still agree with the familiarity statement by the parent also by the way, the recently released follow-up to SICP [0] is still in very much in lisp, MIT Scheme to be specific (like the original SICP). however, this book is far from an introductory text in software engineering [0] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/software-design-flexibility https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/software-design-flexibility
oblio 5y ago
Not really, unless you go to a very small subset of top notch universities, in some geographies.