Yes, pylab stuff is boring, but it seems like prof. John Guttag loves it. Python and pylab are popular in medical and biology departments, and simulations is wh

Yes, pylab stuff is boring, but it seems like prof. John Guttag loves it. Python and pylab are popular in medical and biology departments, and simulations is what they do a lot. But the other half of the course, which explains you how classes and methods were implemented (as frames of environment) is important. It comes from early (and much better, in my opinion) courses, based on Scheme. The main point, I think, is that they teach you that there is no magic in OOP, and if people remain sane (not stuffing 70 methods to a List class) everything is simple and straightforward. Another realization should be that OOP is not necessary, unless you're doing some very specific kind of programming - simulations. It is not just an opinion, they show you that it is nothing but a bunch of conventions. It doesn't really matter how I glue procedures and data together and how I call them - via this arrangement of pointers or that. Much more interesting things happen when I have a general way to do it - list structure, first-class citizens and macros, so code is data, but they don't teach Lisp anymore. They used to teach fundamental concepts and the canonical ways to implement them. Then you can add (or avoid) any complexity you wish.) At least, after this course you probably could realize that there is much better way to do OOP than Java, and it is already a big deal.