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I think it could be argued that the language used in universities is unlikely to be the one used professionally. I remember when the derogatory term "Java schoo

I think it could be argued that the language used in universities is unlikely to be the one used professionally. I remember when the derogatory term "Java school" was commonly used for schools that shoehorned Java in all courses just to try to match the language of the day in enterprises. It really should be about what is the best pedagogical tool to teach the concepts the student is expected to understand irrespective of future professional tools used. If racket exposes those concepts better without making it onerous on students to learn that's great. When MIT switched from scheme to python for their undergrad classes there was a big debate here aboutit. I think the argument was that python won't make learning the concepts any harder but is less of an issue for students to learn and has some long term value professionally so win-win. I don't fully agree but I can see the logic.

andtheyrerobin 3y ago
> It really should be about what is the best pedagogical tool to teach the concepts the student is expected to understand irrespective of future professional tools used. If racket exposes those concepts better without making it onerous on students to learn that's great. One of the challenges with an approach which doesn't concern itself with "industrial grade" or "production ready" languages is getting buy in from student. Even if there were a perfect language for teaching, if students don't see the applicability of that language they aren't going to learn enough of the concepts to move to such a language later. I think it's very easy for us (and other technically competent folks) to see value in learning how computers work for the sake of that knowledge; however, students, as an over generalization, don't. The fact that relevance and motivation are some of the hardest hurdles to overcome in early computing classes is a perfect example of this. Using languages with a professional pedigree is important because it increases student buy in to what they're being taught. An analogy I like is that you wouldn't give someone new to woodworking a toy hammer and hand saw because they need to learn fundamentals like striking and cutting before they can start using "real" tools, you would provide them with capable, but beginner friendly, tools that allow them to build those skills as they learn.
timidger 3y ago
It's not (just) that python is "easier" to learn than python (which I dispute - lisp is as easy to learn as a first language as any other. Depending on the language it may be a difficult second language though). The world had also changed radically since it was introduced into the curriculum: "Costanza asked Sussman why MIT had switched away from Scheme for their introductory programming course, 6.001. This was a gem. He said that the reason that happened was because engineering in 1980 was not what it was in the mid-90s or in 2000. In 1980, good programmers spent a lot of time thinking, and then produced spare code that they thought should work. Code ran close to the metal, even Scheme — it was understandable all the way down. Like a resistor, where you could read the bands and know the power rating and the tolerance and the resistance and V=IR and that’s all there was to know. 6.001 had been conceived to teach engineers how to take small parts that they understood entirely and use simple techniques to compose them into larger things that do what you want. But programming now isn’t so much like that, said Sussman. Nowadays you muck around with incomprehensible or nonexistent man pages for software you don’t know who wrote. You have to do basic science on your libraries to see how they work, trying out different inputs and seeing how the code reacts. This is a fundamentally different job, and it needed a different course. So the good thing about the new 6.001 was that it was robot-centered — you had to program a little robot to move around. And robots are not like resistors, behaving according to ideal functions. Wheels slip, the environment changes, etc — you have to build in robustness to the system, in a different way than the one SICP discusses. And why Python, then? Well, said Sussman, it probably just had a library already implemented for the robotics interface, that was all." https://www.wisdomandwonder.com/link/2110/why-mit-switched-from-scheme-to-python https://www.wisdomandwonder.com/link/2110/why-mit-switched-f...
- agumonkey 3y ago
  I'm still surprised Sussman describes the 2000s as a "new" job whereas to me it's just mediocre soil from an unstable industry. Mucking around is not engineering.. it's alchemy.
  - dreamcompiler 3y ago
    The logical culmination is modern ML, where no engineering is involved. "If the thing fails on some case and kills somebody, train it more." This is voodoo, not engineering.

andtheyrerobin 3y ago

> It really should be about what is the best pedagogical tool to teach the concepts the student is expected to understand irrespective of future professional tools used. If racket exposes those concepts better without making it onerous on students to learn that's great. One of the challenges with an approach which doesn't concern itself with "industrial grade" or "production ready" languages is getting buy in from student. Even if there were a perfect language for teaching, if students don't see the applicability of that language they aren't going to learn enough of the concepts to move to such a language later. I think it's very easy for us (and other technically competent folks) to see value in learning how computers work for the sake of that knowledge; however, students, as an over generalization, don't. The fact that relevance and motivation are some of the hardest hurdles to overcome in early computing classes is a perfect example of this. Using languages with a professional pedigree is important because it increases student buy in to what they're being taught. An analogy I like is that you wouldn't give someone new to woodworking a toy hammer and hand saw because they need to learn fundamentals like striking and cutting before they can start using "real" tools, you would provide them with capable, but beginner friendly, tools that allow them to build those skills as they learn.

timidger 3y ago

It's not (just) that python is "easier" to learn than python (which I dispute - lisp is as easy to learn as a first language as any other. Depending on the language it may be a difficult second language though). The world had also changed radically since it was introduced into the curriculum: "Costanza asked Sussman why MIT had switched away from Scheme for their introductory programming course, 6.001. This was a gem. He said that the reason that happened was because engineering in 1980 was not what it was in the mid-90s or in 2000. In 1980, good programmers spent a lot of time thinking, and then produced spare code that they thought should work. Code ran close to the metal, even Scheme — it was understandable all the way down. Like a resistor, where you could read the bands and know the power rating and the tolerance and the resistance and V=IR and that’s all there was to know. 6.001 had been conceived to teach engineers how to take small parts that they understood entirely and use simple techniques to compose them into larger things that do what you want. But programming now isn’t so much like that, said Sussman. Nowadays you muck around with incomprehensible or nonexistent man pages for software you don’t know who wrote. You have to do basic science on your libraries to see how they work, trying out different inputs and seeing how the code reacts. This is a fundamentally different job, and it needed a different course. So the good thing about the new 6.001 was that it was robot-centered — you had to program a little robot to move around. And robots are not like resistors, behaving according to ideal functions. Wheels slip, the environment changes, etc — you have to build in robustness to the system, in a different way than the one SICP discusses. And why Python, then? Well, said Sussman, it probably just had a library already implemented for the robotics interface, that was all." https://www.wisdomandwonder.com/link/2110/why-mit-switched-from-scheme-to-python https://www.wisdomandwonder.com/link/2110/why-mit-switched-f...

agumonkey 3y ago
I'm still surprised Sussman describes the 2000s as a "new" job whereas to me it's just mediocre soil from an unstable industry. Mucking around is not engineering.. it's alchemy.
- dreamcompiler 3y ago
  The logical culmination is modern ML, where no engineering is involved. "If the thing fails on some case and kills somebody, train it more." This is voodoo, not engineering.