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I still haven't heard a good reason why universities are switching away from Scheme... I'm not one to claim "we must follow the old ways" just for the hell of

I still haven't heard a good reason why universities are switching away from Scheme... I'm not one to claim "we must follow the old ways" just for the hell of it. I can understand the desire to look out at the world of programming languages (which is much larger today than it was when Scheme was invented), but there was a reason to pick Scheme for the original: it's simple. Python, with its "batteries included" philosophy is a poor choice because it misses the original intent. With Scheme, you have to invent everything. With Python, you just have to look up the documentation. Honestly, I can't for the life of me understand why they didn't replace Scheme with Lua.

kstrauser 15y ago
Python, with its "batteries included" philosophy is a poor choice because it misses the original intent. With Scheme, you have to invent everything. With Python, you just have to look up the documentation. For many new programmers, a "batteries included" approach is potentially much better. Once you've learned a little Python, you can read the docs for SimpleHTTPServer and make an online application. I can't imagine how mindblowing that would've been for me as a kid: "you mean I can write this little program and now I have a webserver on the Internet just like Google?" I get where you're coming from. At some point, any would-be professional programmer needs to write a linked list, a binary tree, and a quicksort; not that she'll actually end up using her implementation, but for the sheer experience of understanding what's going on at that level. But I can certainly see the charms of teaching the abstracted versions first so that higher-level concepts are approachable earlier.
irahul 15y ago
> Python, with its "batteries included" philosophy is a poor choice because it misses the original intent. With Scheme, you have to invent everything. With Python, you just have to look up the documentation. Your point doesn't hold. With Racket, which is the recommended scheme, you don't have to invent everything - you just have to look up the documentation. And if you think you won't use Racket, or use #lang htdp or something in Racket; these are artificial restrictions and students can very well be asked(like you are asking not to use batteries with Racket)to respect them while coding in Python. There are other reasons to prefer Scheme over Python, but this isn't one.

kstrauser 15y ago

Python, with its "batteries included" philosophy is a poor choice because it misses the original intent. With Scheme, you have to invent everything. With Python, you just have to look up the documentation. For many new programmers, a "batteries included" approach is potentially much better. Once you've learned a little Python, you can read the docs for SimpleHTTPServer and make an online application. I can't imagine how mindblowing that would've been for me as a kid: "you mean I can write this little program and now I have a webserver on the Internet just like Google?" I get where you're coming from. At some point, any would-be professional programmer needs to write a linked list, a binary tree, and a quicksort; not that she'll actually end up using her implementation, but for the sheer experience of understanding what's going on at that level. But I can certainly see the charms of teaching the abstracted versions first so that higher-level concepts are approachable earlier.

irahul 15y ago

> Python, with its "batteries included" philosophy is a poor choice because it misses the original intent. With Scheme, you have to invent everything. With Python, you just have to look up the documentation. Your point doesn't hold. With Racket, which is the recommended scheme, you don't have to invent everything - you just have to look up the documentation. And if you think you won't use Racket, or use #lang htdp or something in Racket; these are artificial restrictions and students can very well be asked(like you are asking not to use batteries with Racket)to respect them while coding in Python. There are other reasons to prefer Scheme over Python, but this isn't one.