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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)

#41

Post by samatman »

sreeramvenkat wrote: post #35
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.

Scheme is not my first language and I am still greatful for it. I am self learning SICP for past 3 years (after working 15+ years in non-lisp languages). Though still in chapter 2, it has cleared up and simplified my thinking about programming. I no longer consider bottoms up approach to be sin. Understanding new functional language specs becomes a breeze and it 'just clicks'. Though I am yet to understand why Clojur…

This was a limitation of the JVM.

I vaguely recall one of the recent updates removed that limitation, but could be wrong about that.

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

#42

Post by brianberns »

Python makes sense for engineering, like building robots, where practicality is the most important goal.

However, Python is a lousy choice for computer science, where clarity and correctness are much more important. It saddens me that an elite institution like MIT apparently can't see the difference.

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

#43

Post by southerndrift »

karmasimida wrote: post #22
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 pro…

Compared to C, Python is the better choice. However, it seems like you haven't learned a Lisp dialect. I would love to know if you would still prefer Python once you know Scheme.

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

#45

Post by kbp »

Santosh83 wrote: post #31

I contend that within reason, it really doesn't matter exactly which language happens to be one's very first programming language. Programming is ideally motivated by passion, and in that case, a person is certainly not going to give up and change career just because their intro language was a bit inconsistent or rocky. Anyone who gives up programming before at least being fluent in three languages, is giving up prem…

I think it's very common in discussions like this for people to conflate 'Python vs Scheme' with from-first-principles (lambdas, explicit recursion) vs building-real-things as pedagogical approaches. In a lot of people's minds, Python is its standard library and Scheme is explicitly cdring down lists.

I think the problem is that SICP's pedagogical approach (which people confuse with the language Scheme) is, in a way, pretty close to starting with assembler. You spend a lot of time exploring computation (with lambdas as your basis) at a very low level before you graduate to anything that feels "real" or practical.

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

#46

Post by michaelmrose »

sreeramvenkat wrote: post #35
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.

Scheme is not my first language and I am still greatful for it. I am self learning SICP for past 3 years (after working 15+ years in non-lisp languages). Though still in chapter 2, it has cleared up and simplified my thinking about programming. I no longer consider bottoms up approach to be sin. Understanding new functional language specs becomes a breeze and it 'just clicks'. Though I am yet to understand why Clojur…

They could for all cases where recur is presently used. Recur serves to indicate and document that the function is supposed to be tail recursive and will cause an error if this is not proper rather than silently not being optimized and blowing up when fed too large an input.

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

#47

Post by bb88 »

brianberns wrote: post #42

Python makes sense for engineering, like building robots, where practicality is the most important goal. However, Python is a lousy choice for computer science, where clarity and correctness are much more important. It saddens me that an elite institution like MIT apparently can't see the difference.

To be fair, I think many people expect that a BS degree in either computer science or engineering would make them employable.

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

#48

Post by ohazi »

taneq wrote: post #38
Santosh83 wrote: post #31

I contend that within reason, it really doesn't matter exactly which language happens to be one's very first programming language. Programming is ideally motivated by passion, and in that case, a person is certainly not going to give up and change career just because their intro language was a bit inconsistent or rocky. Anyone who gives up programming before at least being fluent in three languages, is giving up prem…

Assembler is arguably a better intro language than most. It makes it explicitly clear what each step of the programming does and how it executes. Once students have done a few projects the they'll be ready to appreciate a higher level language like C. Throwing objects and lambdas and type inference at kids without giving them any grounding in what a computer actually is and does is unfair, and leaves them building ca…

I can't tell if this was meant to be serious of facetious, but I took this route. I learned 8088 assembly to make an ancient robot platform move, and then learned C a few months later.

Assembly had a few weird architecturey things that you had to understand before things made any sense (e.g. registers, segment:offset addressing, stack pointers, calling conventions), but beyond that, all of the tasks were simple and self-contained.

C was a breath of fresh air after that. Things like pointers, which have a reputation for being confusing, make perfect sense coming from assembly.

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

#49

Post by southerndrift »

Santosh83 wrote: post #23
curun1r wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On the one hand, Scheme has an even smaller set of primitives than C. On the other hand, it's far more difficult to construct the larger whole from those primitives. Additionally, you have all the problems from the compiler when you have to manage libraries, include and object files. With some guidance when students are stuck with the compiler, C is not such a bad language to learn programming, but it doesn't hit the same sweet spot as Scheme.

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

#50

Post by smadge »

kbp wrote: post #45
Santosh83 wrote: post #31

I contend that within reason, it really doesn't matter exactly which language happens to be one's very first programming language. Programming is ideally motivated by passion, and in that case, a person is certainly not going to give up and change career just because their intro language was a bit inconsistent or rocky. Anyone who gives up programming before at least being fluent in three languages, is giving up prem…

I think it's very common in discussions like this for people to conflate 'Python vs Scheme' with from-first-principles (lambdas, explicit recursion) vs building-real-things as pedagogical approaches. In a lot of people's minds, Python is its standard library and Scheme is explicitly cdring down lists. I think the problem is that SICP's pedagogical approach (which people confuse with the language Scheme) is, in a way,…

I agree. Learning python requires learning the various data structures that are built in to the language (list, dict, set, classes) and learning the various control structures (if, for, while, etc). These are initially black boxes that a student has to take for granted. On the other end of the pedological spectrum you can start with how to define an abstract data structure and function application as a rewrite system then build up the rest of the lambguage from scratch.
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