And yet Sussman and Abelson themselves were behind the switch from Scheme to Python at MIT. I don't hold them out as infallible, even about their own course, bu

And yet Sussman and Abelson themselves were behind the switch from Scheme to Python at MIT. I don't hold them out as infallible, even about their own course, but it should give us pause, yes? They have a lot of data, we have ... opinions. And the data was saying that students were having trouble learning to do practical engineering problems after this course. So, 2 hours or not (and I say not), the reality is that really bright students had trouble with it, and their professors and designer of the course, co-inventor of the language, and author of SICP thought Python a better choice than Scheme for this course. Empiricism trumps all.