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Why MIT switched from Scheme to Python (2009)

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284 points borski | 1 comments | 25 Jul 25 16:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.209s | source
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MontyCarloHall ◴[25 Jul 25 17:23 UTC] No.44685710[source]▶
Isn't this just part of the broader trend of CS departments switching away from teaching computer science to teaching computer engineering, which in turn is part of the more general trend of colleges becoming more vocational?

LISP dialects like Scheme are excellent for teaching pure computer science because they are the closest thing to executing lambda calculus expressions. Whereas Python is excellent for teaching applied computer engineering, because it's essentially executable pseudocode for imperative languages, and imperative languages are the most common language a computer engineer encounters in the real world.

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darksaints ◴[25 Jul 25 18:10 UTC] No.44686308[source]▶
Colleges becoming more vocational is a consequence of colleges becoming more expensive for students. If you are paying all of that money for college, you better get a good job out of it. I don't see that as a bad thing necessarily, but it would definitely be nice if we had better paths for those who want to end up in research.

I'd argue that SML (or derivative thereof) would make for a better teaching language, for both the lambda calculus aspect and the type theory aspect.

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1. throwaway328 ◴[25 Jul 25 18:42 UTC] No.44686719[source]▶
I suspect you might be observing two correlates and picking one as the cause of the other in a way that is ahistorical.

Specifically, it seems to me that colleges becoming more vocational and colleges becoming more expensive are both natural outcomes of the neoliberalisation of all things. I am aware that some students now rationalise their educational investments with the logic you describe above, but I think it's a post-hoc rationalisation.

You can get a good job without going to college, and you can get a good education without paying a gazillion bucks.

A side point, but calling it "vocational" seems a bit euphemistic too. Learning carpentry is a vocation. Getting a business degree is not equivalent to learning carpentry. I might say colleges have become commercialised, rather.