All engineering majors at MIT were not required to take SCIP, just the EE/CS majors. Back when I was a student, the rest of us either took 1.00 (C as taught by

All engineering majors at MIT were not required to take SCIP, just the EE/CS majors. Back when I was a student, the rest of us either took 1.00 (C as taught by civil engineers) or 2.10 (Fortran, by mechanical engineers), or we simply learned a language on our own time. That being said, the purpose of 6.001 (SCIP) was not to learn Scheme, but to use Scheme to introduce students to some of the fundamental concepts of computer science. As for Feynman, the reason he only taught the class once (over three semesters, I believe), is that there was only one Feynman, and he had a pretty full plate of other things to work on. The "Feynman Lectures" were never meant to be textbooks. They were what they were: lectures, to be read by students seeking additional insights in physics.