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Why MIT switched from Scheme to Python (2009)

(www.wisdomandwonder.com)
284 points borski | 1 comments | 25 Jul 25 16:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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mrexroad ◴[25 Jul 25 17:17 UTC] No.44685626[source]▶
Ga Tech used to teach Scheme as an intro to CS course. I vividly remember sitting in lecture and being struck w/ the implications of functional programming as the professor said you could pass functions into functions and modify them. It was as formative of a moment as my 2nd Grade teacher showing us a really complex looking (at the time) rainbow flower in LOGO (she had one of few color Mac classic), and showing us it was simply the work of drawing the path of one petal, then repeating same “work” after changing two values (starting angle and color).
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1. ylee ◴[25 Jul 25 21:23 UTC] No.44688652[source]▶
>It was as formative of a moment as my 2nd Grade teacher showing us a really complex looking (at the time) rainbow flower in LOGO (she had one of few color Mac classic), and showing us it was simply the work of drawing the path of one petal, then repeating same “work” after changing two values (starting angle and color).

I also well remember the epiphany I felt while learning Logo in elementary school, at the moment I understood what recursion is. I don't think the fact that the language I have mostly written code in in recent years is Emacs Lisp is unrelated to the above moment.