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Why MIT uses Python instead of Scheme for its undergraduate CS program (2009)

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Re: Why MIT uses Python instead of Scheme for its undergraduate CS program (2009)

#21

Post by alexashka »

As someone who's read SICP when first starting out and re-reading it and re-watching the lectures much much later - I can say that 95% of the value of SICP flew completely over my head when I was first learning.

I remembered catch phrases like 'assignment is bad', only to be led down the 'functional programming' cult years later because it reminded me of sicp.

Building up entire systems from first principles is quite beautiful and illuminating - once you've used existing systems and began to wonder how they came to be.

For most people - I don't think they're really that curious. University is not structured to give you the time to go deep or be curious - you're busy doing assignments, readings and studying for tests. SICP is a gem for those who are lucky to have a few months to really go down the rabbit hole. For everyone else, it'll likely feel like needless torture or 'wow, that's cool and I don't have time to explore it any further' at best.

Re: Why MIT uses Python instead of Scheme for its undergraduate CS program (2009)

#22

Post by karmasimida »

ng12 wrote: post #2

> However, he did say that starting off with python makes an undergraduate’s initial experiences maximally productive in the current environment. I read this as "the parents paying tuition wanted their kids to learn practical skills so they can make money". I learned Scheme as a first language and I will be forever grateful for it.

I learned Python as my first TRUE(explain later) language and I will be forever grateful for it.

Now I am a polyglot, jumping through multiple languages all the time, be it Python/Java/Javascript, or occasionally flirtation with some languages that are foreign to my daily routine but necessary to get my job done.

I am not quite on board with you claim that Python is chosen for monetary benefits. To be a qualified programmer, there is so much more need to be learnt beyond Python. Python however, is a GREAT choice to overcome the initial fear of writing code in general, because it is more tolerant.

My actual first language is C, and before my college I have never done programming before. I have to say, looking back, learning C as my first language without fully understanding the modern computer architecture is a horrible experience: so many questions as to why things is what it is now, so many traps, crazy pointers, cryptic errors, nightmare segmentfault. Programming is just very frustrating experience to me that the time. Of course, later on, it all makes sense, even pointer seems like a great idea(you can't have more freedom than that), just that we need to put great efforts regulating the use of it to prevent irregular behaviors.

On the other hand, Python is a tolerant language, yet providing a pretty comprehensive sets of primitives to play and experiment with. Had I started with Python, I might not waste the initial year struggling and questioning myself whether I could program at all.

Re: Why MIT uses Python instead of Scheme for its undergraduate CS program (2009)

#23

Post by Santosh83 »

curun1r wrote: post #19
ng12 wrote: post #2

> However, he did say that starting off with python makes an undergraduate’s initial experiences maximally productive in the current environment. I read this as "the parents paying tuition wanted their kids to learn practical skills so they can make money". I learned Scheme as a first language and I will be forever grateful for it.

Same here. When I learned programming at UC Berkeley in the 90s, Scheme was the intro language. It was perfect precisely because it was so far from being the kind of language you'd use to engineer large projects. The first day, the professor spent less than half of the period introducing the entire syntax of the language...it's so damn simple. Beyond that, all learning was abstraction, problem solving and CS concepts…

> It was learning how to take a very limited set of primitives and construct a larger whole.

By this measure C should be a popular university intro language too, but it is famously unsuitable as a first language, at least according to academics.

Re: Why MIT uses Python instead of Scheme for its undergraduate CS program (2009)

#24

Post by JonathanMerklin »

curun1r wrote: post #19
ng12 wrote: post #2

> However, he did say that starting off with python makes an undergraduate’s initial experiences maximally productive in the current environment. I read this as "the parents paying tuition wanted their kids to learn practical skills so they can make money". I learned Scheme as a first language and I will be forever grateful for it.

Same here. When I learned programming at UC Berkeley in the 90s, Scheme was the intro language. It was perfect precisely because it was so far from being the kind of language you'd use to engineer large projects. The first day, the professor spent less than half of the period introducing the entire syntax of the language...it's so damn simple. Beyond that, all learning was abstraction, problem solving and CS concepts…

> There will be so many students that will struggle to learn python-specific topics that are irrelevant to learning the act of coding

Correct me if I'm wrong - I just went to an unrespected state school - but I would think that the MIT admissions filter selects for students who wouldn't particularly struggle with something as small as language idiosyncracies, especially in an introductory course.

Re: Why MIT uses Python instead of Scheme for its undergraduate CS program (2009)

#25

Post by habitue »

curun1r wrote: post #19
ng12 wrote: post #2

> However, he did say that starting off with python makes an undergraduate’s initial experiences maximally productive in the current environment. I read this as "the parents paying tuition wanted their kids to learn practical skills so they can make money". I learned Scheme as a first language and I will be forever grateful for it.

Same here. When I learned programming at UC Berkeley in the 90s, Scheme was the intro language. It was perfect precisely because it was so far from being the kind of language you'd use to engineer large projects. The first day, the professor spent less than half of the period introducing the entire syntax of the language...it's so damn simple. Beyond that, all learning was abstraction, problem solving and CS concepts…

We also live in an era where it's basically impossible that kids getting into MIT's CS program haven't been exposed to programming before. I think it's a romantic idea, but the fact is college isn't where you learn to program, it's where you learn the time complexity of btrees.

Re: Why MIT uses Python instead of Scheme for its undergraduate CS program (2009)

#26

Post by _hardwaregeek »

blhack wrote: post #20

I couldn't be more thankful that python was one of my first languages, and this is something that I've passed on to everybody I've ever mentored. Python is a real language that does real things, but it's also completely approachable to a newbie. If programming seems hard, then you have a bad teacher that is probably just trying to evangelize their hobby to you. And god help anybody that tries to start with JavaScript…

I don't get why people hate on starting with JavaScript. Since ES6, JS strikes a really nice balance between practical usage and theoretical value. Like Scheme it's a dynamically typed language focused around a single data structure (list for Scheme, object for JS), with first class functions. Sure, it has weak typing and there's some scoping complexity. But, that's a completely reasonable tradeoff for being one of the most useful languages in the entire world. Not to mention, JS's weird casting issues are not as common as people make them out to be and const/let solves a lot of the scoping problems.

Re: Why MIT uses Python instead of Scheme for its undergraduate CS program (2009)

#28

Post by kristianov »

_hardwaregeek wrote: post #26
blhack wrote: post #20

I couldn't be more thankful that python was one of my first languages, and this is something that I've passed on to everybody I've ever mentored. Python is a real language that does real things, but it's also completely approachable to a newbie. If programming seems hard, then you have a bad teacher that is probably just trying to evangelize their hobby to you. And god help anybody that tries to start with JavaScript…

I don't get why people hate on starting with JavaScript. Since ES6, JS strikes a really nice balance between practical usage and theoretical value. Like Scheme it's a dynamically typed language focused around a single data structure (list for Scheme, object for JS), with first class functions. Sure, it has weak typing and there's some scoping complexity. But, that's a completely reasonable tradeoff for being one of t…

Agreed. Building a web app is more "real" to many who are just starting out.

Re: Why MIT uses Python instead of Scheme for its undergraduate CS program (2009)

#29

Post by jancsika »

I like to imagine Lazy University, where the committee meets and immediately standardizes on somebody's offhand remark that the intro course should use Javascript because it's probably running on every device the students are using.

Or, replace Javascript with any other high level language likely to be running on every smartphone. If there are competing offhanded suggestions then bonus lazy points for using a random number generator to decide the winner.

Only when the committee meeting is over do Lazy U. profs begin planning how to teach their classes. And there's more time for that since the Lazy U. committee meeting was an order of magnitude shorter than most. (Although the laziness would probably be recursive and result in the elimination of the lecture, lab, geographic proximity to students, and assignments that can be distinguished from publicly accessible repositories full of code and research.)

Re: Why MIT uses Python instead of Scheme for its undergraduate CS program (2009)

#30

Post by white-flame »

alexashka wrote: post #21

As someone who's read SICP when first starting out and re-reading it and re-watching the lectures much much later - I can say that 95% of the value of SICP flew completely over my head when I was first learning. I remembered catch phrases like 'assignment is bad', only to be led down the 'functional programming' cult years later because it reminded me of sicp. Building up entire systems from first principles is quite…

> University is not structured to give you the time to go deep or be curious - you're busy doing assignments, readings and studying for tests.

That statement, while true, should anguish the heart of anybody in any way related to or concerned for academia.

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