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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)

#71

Post by munificent »

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.

Counter-point: Everyone is grateful for our formative experiences because those experiences shape our identity, and we're obviously heavily emotionally invested in who we are.

But we highly overvalue which formative experiences matter. If I were to get into a time machine, go into your past, remove Scheme and swap in some other language, you'd probably be grateful today for whatever that other language was. It just hit you at the right time, like whatever song was on the radio when you first fell in love.

Every step on our path is dear to us because it got us where we are today, but there are many many paths and little reason to want others to follow in our footsteps. If anything, we should discourage that because the world doesn't need another me or you. It's already got those.

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

#72

Post by taneq »

Matumio wrote: post #51
taneq wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

By that logic, you'd have to start with vhdl. Which is a great place to start if you want to grok what a CPU actually is, what pipelining means, and how to write truly parallel code. Except that most people never need to know. That's progress: you can build most useful applications without ever having to learn that there is a distinction between virtual and physical memory.

I think it's more like saying that to design CPUs, you should start by understanding what a transistor is.

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

#73

Post by mtzet »

southerndrift wrote: post #43
karmasimida wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think both C, Python and Scheme are all perfectly fine choices for a first language. It really depends on what you want to do.

Want to learn how a computer works? Learn C.

Want to study abstract comp-sci concepts? Learn Scheme.

Want to wire together libraries to get something running in the messy real world? Learn Python (or something similiar).

A well-rounded CS education really ought to include all of these to at least some degree.

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

#74

Post by Pica_soO »

I wish there was a UnitTest built into every library you use, where the library tests your program, whether the attaching program can handle all special cases. APIs today are not standardized in what they do and that is horrifying. These Unittests built into every library should be the default.

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

#75

Post by gronne »

JonathanMerklin wrote: post #24
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…

> 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.

If you have never been exposed to programming before chances are you will struggle no matter the name of the school. The name will, most likely, help you get a better job but don’t worry about the skill level attained (unless you went to something like Trump university).

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

#76

Post by gdy »

taneq wrote: post #65
ohazi wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Serious. I'm not saying you should stick with assembler for any great length of time, but understanding what instructions and registers and memory are is pretty important later on. In university I had fellow students who struggled with pointers because even at the end of first year they didn't really understand what memory was or how it worked.

https://stefansf.de/post/pointers-are-more-abstract-than-you...

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

#77

Post by gronne »

_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…

I disagree completely - javascript encourages shitty programming by design and by culture. If you don’t expose the young chances are they won’t get infected.

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

#78

Post by innocentoldguy »

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…

> I am not quite on board with you [sic] claim that Python is chosen for monetary benefits.

I can see it. I used to make a lot of money doing Python programming. About $40k a year more than I ever made doing C, Java, C# or C++. Of course, I did Python more recently, so there is the wage inflation between 1992 and today to consider. Still, you can make a lot writing Python code.

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

#79

Post by swelz »

xte wrote: post #54

Bullshit translator: mean intelligence of newcomers becomes so low that we have to lower our programs or only veeeeery few can attend them. And we need more students so more money. Disagree? Say thanks to all school reforms in the past 30-40-50 years. A bit of extras: in today world we can't produce really anything new due to managerial-driven society and beside that it's better people do NOT really understand how th…

>Bullshit translator: mean intelligence of newcomers becomes so low that we have to lower our programs or only veeeeery few can attend them.

In this case, I think the areas in which programming and CS are applicable has increased so greatly it's now more feasible to have them start from a more general abstracted area and chose their focus as they grow - learning the tools and theory they need for their chosen focus.

If they start getting bogged down by more complex languages it prevents them from identifying after a year or two which areas they are interested in pursuing and focusing on.

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

#80

Post by Ar-Curunir »

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…

At Berkeley we've switched out the SICP-based 61A for a Pythonic 61A, similar to MIT. It certainly hasn't driven away any CS students; on the contrary, the number of CS majors has exploded.
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