Everything Is Just Functions: 1 week with David Beazley and SICP

I've watched the actual SICP lectures before (the 1986 recordings on MIT OCW). They're often praised for the information density, but it actually still wastes a lot of time listening to students' Q&A, the lecturers drawing the class' attention to various attempts at "multimedia" presentation in the classroom, simply not having the entire lesson plan worked out in advance (i.e., not being able to preempt the Q&A) etc. For that matter, the sheer amount of time spent on writing things on a chalkboard really adds up.

And of course the order of the material could be debated and rearranged countless ways. One of my future planned projects is to do my own video series presenting the material according to my own sensibilities.

It's nice to hear that the course apparently still stays true to its roots while using more current languages like Python. Python is designed as a pragmatic, multi-paradigm language and I think people often don't give it enough credit for its expressive power using FP idioms (if not with complete purity).

FP in Python is rather weak. Even JS does a better job there. Some of the code exercises will need completely different solutions than in Scheme, due to not having TCO. What do instructors do, when their 1 to 1 translated code fails? Tell the students, that due to the choice of language it does not work that way, and that they simply need to believe it? Or do they treat it all as externalize the stack problems and solve it that way?

It seems rather silly to force SICP into Python.