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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: 0.212s | 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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SoftTalker ◴[25 Jul 25 17:31 UTC] No.44685819[source]▶
Yes. One of the biggest complaints that computer science departments used to get from students is that they weren't learning any languages that employers are using.
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ok123456 ◴[25 Jul 25 17:49 UTC] No.44686040[source]▶
There were plenty of less rarefied CS departments that were concerned about this, and they taught C, C++, or Java in their introductory classes.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter. It's your first language, not your last.

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1. zelphirkalt ◴[25 Jul 25 19:14 UTC] No.44687161[source]▶
I learned programming before entering a degree in this stuff and I think learning a badly designed language as first language made me lose a few years, and additionally, if I weren't so driven to learn more, I probably still wouldn't know more than many others, and might have never explored the field of functional languages. If I hadn't started reading SICP and exploring Scheme and others, I wouldn't know half of what I know now about computer programming.

Sticking to only some Algol family language makes people have a severely limited perspective on things.