Some advice on teaching FP
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Some advice on teaching FP
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Re: Some advice on teaching FP
#2There are several reasons that these posts are annoying. If you read HN and are a programmer, then what do you have to gain from this? If you read HN and aren't, one could ask a similar question.
The real annoyance, however, is that this (and the recent rash of posts about Stanford's "innovative" CS curriculum) make a whole lot of sense to technical people.
Do you ever think about how, as technical people, the way that you think is different from those around you? Certainly. And wouldn't it be great if they saw the world as you do? Certainy.
So, teach them how to do so in a course designed for YOU. That'll teach 'em. Just like the literature courses you took spoke to you so clearly.
Oh, wait, they did? Then you're one of the people at the top that don't need a curriculum that is carefully designed to change the way that you think. You just need to be presented with new and interesting ideas and you'll run with them.
So, Stanford and CMU, stop pretending that you're changing minds; admit that you're just enhancing them. Those of us who don't have 1600 SAT students to hide behind have been doing this for years...and don't need "advice on teaching FP."
Re: Some advice on teaching FP
#3I'm a TA (one of four) for the course Harper is talking about in this post. As they say on reddit, ask me anything. I do not guarantee I'll answer. I'll check back in in the morning.
Re: Some advice on teaching FP
#4I'm a TA (one of four) for the course Harper is talking about in this post. As they say on reddit, ask me anything. I do not guarantee I'll answer. I'll check back in in the morning.
I remember it being a rare event when 212 created a FP enthusiast. Are the students in the new course liking it or just enduring it?
Re: Some advice on teaching FP
#5I'm a TA (one of four) for the course Harper is talking about in this post. As they say on reddit, ask me anything. I do not guarantee I'll answer. I'll check back in in the morning.
I remember it being a rare event when 212 created a FP enthusiast. Are the students in the new course liking it or just enduring it?
That's hard for me to know because, as a TA, I mostly get to see students when they're confused or frustrated, up against a deadline. The fact that almost all our students are also enrolled in spring 251 with Luis von Ahn, and therefore incredibly overworked, doesn't help.
However, a reasonable proportion of students seem interested, and a handful are overtly enthusiastic about the course. If I had to guess I'd say it won't be an order-of-magnitude improvement over 212, but it will be significant one, if only because it will reach more students earlier in their undergraduate careers. However, only time will tell.
As for 212's reputation, you and I must run in different circles; I know plenty of FP enthusiasts who got their first taste in 212. I suspect a strong selection bias is at work here.
Re: Some advice on teaching FP
#6I'm a TA (one of four) for the course Harper is talking about in this post. As they say on reddit, ask me anything. I do not guarantee I'll answer. I'll check back in in the morning.
Thoughts on SML vs. Haskell?
Re: Some advice on teaching FP
#7I'm a TA (one of four) for the course Harper is talking about in this post. As they say on reddit, ask me anything. I do not guarantee I'll answer. I'll check back in in the morning.
Has Harper actually done any real programming of significance? I am an "industry programmer" who has a pretty strong theoretical bent (have a math degree rather than CS, have read most of Harper's papers on the type theory and semantics of module systems), but when I read his blog posts I get the feeling that when it comes to programming he doesn't really know what's up.
Re: Some advice on teaching FP
#8Bob is an incredibly smart and accomplished guy, and I imagine the students will get a lot from the course.
That being said the tone of triumphalism and the suggestion that a whole bunch of tough problems in CS (parallelism, program verification of real systems) are about to be solved by the majesty of strongly-typed functional languages is awfully familiar from the way Bob was talking about 15-20 years ago.
We certainly have seen many interesting research papers, type systems and compilers since then, but I'm not sure whether much progress has been made on anything more visible to the much-maligned 'working programmer'.
Re: Some advice on teaching FP
#9Bob is an incredibly smart and accomplished guy, and I imagine the students will get a lot from the course. That being said the tone of triumphalism and the suggestion that a whole bunch of tough problems in CS (parallelism, program verification of real systems) are about to be solved by the majesty of strongly-typed functional languages is awfully familiar from the way Bob was talking about 15-20 years ago. We certa…
The more worrying thing from a pedagogical point of view is his claim that a bunch of problems that programmers outside academia regularly deal with are non-problems and don't need to be taught, because they're cruft that is on the verge of obsolescence.
He had better be right, or he'll be helping to produce a cohort of students who don't know a lot of stuff they might find themselves needing to know! (Of course, I realize that Harper doesn't control the entire CMU curriculum, so it's quite possible that despite his views, CMU students will end up studying the "not worth studying" versions of parallelism/architecture/etc. problems and solutions in other courses.)
Re: Some advice on teaching FP
#10Bob is an incredibly smart and accomplished guy, and I imagine the students will get a lot from the course. That being said the tone of triumphalism and the suggestion that a whole bunch of tough problems in CS (parallelism, program verification of real systems) are about to be solved by the majesty of strongly-typed functional languages is awfully familiar from the way Bob was talking about 15-20 years ago. We certa…
The more worrying thing from a pedagogical point of view is his claim that a bunch of problems that programmers outside academia regularly deal with are non-problems and don't need to be taught, because they're cruft that is on the verge of obsolescence. He had better be right, or he'll be helping to produce a cohort of students who don't know a lot of stuff they might find themselves needing to know! (Of course, I r…
This is a first year course. I think the idea is to teach students a `right way' before sullying their minds with real world `wrong ways' and more practical concerns.