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SICP in Clojure

sicpinclojure.com

61–62 of 62 posts

Re: SICP in Clojure

#61
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post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, would love to. But I don't have a fighting chance with that. Pushing SICP through would be an unbelievable feat.

That's a real shame. Bob Harper's philosophy is that the teaching of computer science is more important than the vagaries of one technology industry trend or another. I wish more schools agreed with him.

In their defense, this is EE, not CS. The main thing that matters to them is to get the future engineers proficient in C. When I push for SICP, I claim it will achieve this better than the proposed alternatives, which are all-C and Python-then-C.

Our CS department did use SICP for many years, including when I was a student. Unfortunately they just dumped it, I don't know why. The fact they dumped it makes life even more difficult for me with this...

Re: SICP in Clojure

#62
post #59
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what's in the Python course, and they very well could be doing a decent job of teaching CS concepts. However, I'll assume it's a "here's how a for loop works"-type course. The ultimate utility is ignoring a specific language (Scheme really has nothing to do with the book, and SICP is not a Lisp book per se) and teaching students how to think about computing . It enables problem solving and understanding…

Wow, the Brian Harvey essay you linked to is exactly what I was hoping to find. A down-to-earth explanation of the benefits, as opposed to Dijkstra's formalism and its potential to alienate non-programmers (in fairness, I only read the first half of it, getting late here). Thanks! Your explanation is of course along the same lines, and rings true, but I need a "source of authority" (if I can even get someone to liste…

Good luck.
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