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Why MIT switched from Scheme to Python

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Re: Why MIT switched from Scheme to Python

#71

Post by 10ren »

tlb wrote: post #33
time_management wrote: post #9

I wonder, if the switch had been made now, it they would have switched to Clojure instead of Python. It's a lot closer to Scheme, and its connection to the JVM gives it a lot of practical power. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

People often say that Java has great libraries, but is it true? AWT is crufty and ugly. Maybe there are impressive XML parsers (Xerxes is 188,000 lines of Java!), but I don't want those. Numerical libraries seem bad. So what is the library that might convince me to use Java for something?

http://freshmeat.net/tags/java-libraries

I'm not saying they are all are high quality, or relevant to your task, or that there are no C++ or Python equivalents - just that there is a high quantity of Java projects. Why not have a quick search? Maybe there is a project there that will convince you.

AWT is about the most prejudiced example imaginable - it was rushed out, disowned by its authors, and quickly replaced.

I think one of the key aspects of the java ecosystem is the idea of free reference-implementation libraries, but you can pay ridiculous amount of money for corporate versions with better implementations. For example, the BEA Systems implementation of Java itself and related tools seems pretty good, well-documented and so on.

I find Java itself and its OO style is pretty horrible for writing prototype code that can be changed quickly and arbitrarily - so, probably, any revolutionary ideas that require that flexibility of interfaces will be hard to iterate in java, and therefore we probably won't find many such projects written in java.

Re: Why MIT switched from Scheme to Python

#72

Post by [deleted] »

habibur wrote: post #70
smallpaul wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JSON is much more popular than s-expressions, and not just accidentally. Explicit, compact syntax for both lists and key-value pairs is The Right Thing in a language like this. { "x": [ { "y": "a", "z": 23, "q": [ 54, 32, 45 ] } ], "r": 43 }

Why can't we keep the indents and drop the parens?

[deleted]

Re: Why MIT switched from Scheme to Python

#73

Post by wheels »

sethg wrote: post #54
trjordan wrote: post #3

I think there's something else here, implicit in Sussman's comment, that's important. MIT was founded on a philosophy of practicality, and everything else is secondary. If you couple that with the belief that fundamental computer science is the most efficient way to enhance practical software engineering, Scheme was a wonderful choice. Java and C++ may have been more directly practical to software engineers, but they…

I'm wondering if pressure on MIT to develop demonstrable practical skills in underclassmen has increased since (classic) 6.001 was introduced. I mean, if you're smart enough to get into MIT in the first place and you learn Scheme as a sophomore and CLU as a junior, then by the time you graduate and look for a job, you should be able to get up to speed pretty quickly in Java or C++ or whatever the flavor of the month…

I've not found a college on the planet that graduates good programmers. It's something you have to learn from experience, and a college curriculum simply include enough large coding projects for people to become good. I regularly run across code in recommendations stuff written by Ivy League post docs and most of it's pretty bad, even if the ideas it implements are smart.

I think that realizing that universities can't effectively teach programming should be at the root of choosing which programming languages are used in computer science instruction. In college you get loaded up with the right concepts that will later facilitate you as a programmer, and I think languages chosen should be languages that are geared to that end.

Perhaps the most instructive thing I've seen for student programmers, and which pays to boot, is Google's Summer of Code. That throws students in with a bunch of brutally honest and usually seasoned hackers and makes them fare for their own for a summer.

Re: Why MIT switched from Scheme to Python

#74

Post by stcredzero »

drawkbox wrote: post #56
anthonyb wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Python, there are also a number of game libraries around which you might be able to repurpose. Pyglet, Pygame and PyOgre are three which spring to mind. Depending on exactly what you're trying to do, of course...

Panda3D, developed by Disney and given to CMU for research. One real MMO built off of it, Pirates of the Caribbean.

Panda3D is quite good. It has many basic building blocks for 3D games. When I used it, docs were ok but a bit sparse in places, but you could deduce much from what was auto-generated.

Re: Why MIT switched from Scheme to Python

#76

Post by smallpaul »

habibur wrote: post #70
smallpaul wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JSON is much more popular than s-expressions, and not just accidentally. Explicit, compact syntax for both lists and key-value pairs is The Right Thing in a language like this. { "x": [ { "y": "a", "z": 23, "q": [ 54, 32, 45 ] } ], "r": 43 }

Why can't we keep the indents and drop the parens?

YAML?

Re: Why MIT switched from Scheme to Python

#77

Post by dhess »

tlb wrote: post #27
pg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it's not a code word for that it's often a code word for something bad. Not always, but often. People defending what's right can say one should do it because it's right. But people defending something they know is basically wrong can't say one should do it because it's wrong. So they look around for another word, and "practical" is usually the first they find.

In this particular case of Gerry Sussman choosing Python over Scheme, I don't think he's using "practical" to mean "I know it's wrong, but I'm comfortable with Java so Python seems more familiar". I think "practical" often means choosing your battles. Sussman's choosing to fight the battle of explaining some syntax to his students rather than the battle of implementing a real-time robot control library from scratch i…

I was fortunate enough to attend this ILC session last night. Some people here are reading way too much into what Gerry Sussman said. I don't think Lispers should castigate Gerry for MIT's decision to use Python in its new introductory EECS curriculum, nor should Pythonistas praise him for giving in to "practical" concerns.

It's not evident from Andy Wingo's blog post, but just to clarify, Gerry didn't choose Python over Scheme: a committee did. Gerry said that when they had their revelation about the state of computer programming in 1997, he and Hal Abelson decided to stop teaching 6.001, and they eventually stepped away from the course altogether. (I believe Gerry returned to teach the class for the final term it was offered, but he didn't get into that last night; I could be wrong.)

Gerry went on to say that 6.001 essentially languished until sometime around 2007, when a committee got together and redesigned the introductory EECS curriculum to be what is now 6.0[012]. He didn't say whether he was on that committee, but I got the impression he was not. He appeared to be speculating when he offered the reason why Python was chosen. It was an offhand remark, something to the effect of (and I'm paraphrasing here), "And why Python? I suppose there were already good libraries for controlling these robots."

It sounded like Gerry explicitly chose not to fight any battles at all on this issue, and simply walked away resigned to the fact that computer programming, and engineering in general, are much different now than they were when he, Hal and Julie wrote SICP.

Two more things:

* I don't recall Gerry using the word "practical" even once while reciting his short anecdote.

* Gerry continues to teach with Scheme, not Python, in 6.945, his advanced topics course.

Re: Why MIT switched from Scheme to Python

#78

Post by lyriendel »

I was a TA for 6.01 two years ago. 6.01 and 6.02 (Intro to EECS II, may have replaced 6.001 and 6.002, but their purposes are fundamentally different, as someone else mentioned earlier. They're now both introductions to a wide range of CS topics--6.01 covers not just software engineering, but feedback and control, circuits, and probability and planning; 6.02 covers things like signal processing, digital logic, and networking. Good computer scientists nowadays need to (or at least should) know so much more than how to write good, clean, modular code. As the 6.01 FAQ says, they still teach software abstraction ideas including functional programming, higher-order functions, and object-oriented programming. They chose Python mostly because Python is easily approachable. But most of 'modernizing' 6.001 isn't about moving from scheme to Python--it's focusing on learning how to modularize/abstract and model/analyze across a variety of different contexts (not just software, but linear systems, circuits, and AI).

Also, 6.01 actually assumes that you have some programming experience already. When I TAed, at least, we assumed working knowledge of basic Python from week 1 and told people to go read a Python tutorial/book if they didn't have such. If you don't know how to program at all, you're supposed to take 6.00 first, which is the real 'Introduction to Programming' course. Except that most people skip it because they already know how to program or think they can learn on their own (and because it's kind of seen as a remedial course, which is especially unfortunate for people who really don't know how to program already--6.01 is pretty harsh if you've never programmed before).

Re: Why MIT switched from Scheme to Python

#79

Post by sayrer »

dhess wrote: post #77
tlb wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this particular case of Gerry Sussman choosing Python over Scheme, I don't think he's using "practical" to mean "I know it's wrong, but I'm comfortable with Java so Python seems more familiar". I think "practical" often means choosing your battles. Sussman's choosing to fight the battle of explaining some syntax to his students rather than the battle of implementing a real-time robot control library from scratch i…

I was fortunate enough to attend this ILC session last night. Some people here are reading way too much into what Gerry Sussman said. I don't think Lispers should castigate Gerry for MIT's decision to use Python in its new introductory EECS curriculum, nor should Pythonistas praise him for giving in to "practical" concerns. It's not evident from Andy Wingo's blog post, but just to clarify, Gerry didn't choose Python…

It sounds like a healthy attitude. It's not like Scheme and Python are radically different languages.

Re: Why MIT switched from Scheme to Python

#80

Post by ilkhd2 »

habibur wrote: post #70
smallpaul wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JSON is much more popular than s-expressions, and not just accidentally. Explicit, compact syntax for both lists and key-value pairs is The Right Thing in a language like this. { "x": [ { "y": "a", "z": 23, "q": [ 54, 32, 45 ] } ], "r": 43 }

Why can't we keep the indents and drop the parens?

1.hmm, well, if you try it you'll see that at least in the area of programming languages, after spending some time you'll see that you reinvented s-expressions. 2. can be very interesting to see for example this (sum of every vector-element) in json/yaml...

(defn sum-vec [vec] (let [vec-len (count vec)] (loop [idx 0 acc 0] (if (< idx vec-len) (recur (inc idx) (+ acc (vec idx))) acc))))

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