[gambit-list] Why MIT switched from Scheme to Python

Ali emailaliclark at gmail.com
Thu Mar 26 09:48:10 EDT 2009


I've recently taken an intro course in Scheme. A few people including myself
already knew a bit of Scheme and found it easy (but pleased to be
programming in Scheme of course :)  I'd guestimate that a lot of people
still didn't know how to use basic functional glue like map, foldl and
partial by the end of the course. Moving on to Java a few people at least
said they liked the Java more than Scheme!

Really, I wouldn't mind if they moved that course to Python - not many
people learn the value of functional programming when they've just written
hello world, and anyone who would've enjoyed it will learn in their own time
anyway. S-exprs give a benefit of macro-programming, but that isn't taught
in an intro course. In the end a lot of people just get a wrongly negative
impression of Scheme and might enjoy programming more if they started in
Python. The one big big pitfall of teaching Python is in teaching those bad
imperative habits, but as I said, few people learn to program functionally
at that stage anyway, and those habits can be unlearned.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.iro.umontreal.ca/pipermail/gambit-list/attachments/20090326/6ebaaeca/attachment.htm>


More information about the Gambit-list mailing list