MIT Lisp lecture from '86. wow. • Hacker News Board

Re: MIT Lisp lecture from '86. wow.

#21

Post by jimbokun » Fri, Jan 25, 2008, 4:02 PM UTC

aston wrote: post #18

kflasch wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all of the excitement I see online about SICP and Lisp/Scheme, do you (or anyone else) know why they are transitioning away from the book and Scheme?

You may have missed the other excitement online about schools changing their computer science programs to make them more attractive to students. MIT's not really ratcheting down the difficulty, but starting off everyone in Scheme was really off-putting to a number of students. The new intro classes are in Python, which you could argue has the immediate benefit of being used in the world outside of MIT. They're also n…

"The new intro classes are in Python, which you could argue has the immediate benefit of being used in the world outside of MIT."

Yep. They can tell incoming freshmen they can use Python when they get a job at Google. Something that was not true of Scheme.

Re: MIT Lisp lecture from '86. wow.

#22

Post by jimbokun » Fri, Jan 25, 2008, 4:08 PM UTC

mrtron wrote: post #6

Imagine being able to re-watch your lectures online when studying for an exam...that would be great. It is fantastic that such lectures are being put online for the use of anyone.

I'm watching the Gilbert Strang linear algebra course to pick up enough for other classes I am taking. Saves me using up an entire semester for that (I have a tuition benefit which I am using to take one class for semester; so I can take Information Retrieval now instead of taking Linear Algebra and waiting until next Spring.).

Re: MIT Lisp lecture from '86. wow.

#23

Post by pchristensen » Fri, Jan 25, 2008, 5:24 PM UTC

ptn wrote: post #20

All the Intro to CS classes start the same: the teacher writes COMPUTER SCIENCE in the board and then says 'this is not a science and it is not about computers' and crosses them out.

Where do you think it came from?

Re: MIT Lisp lecture from '86. wow.

#24

Post by eru » Sat, Jan 26, 2008, 1:24 AM UTC

kmt wrote: post #12

mrtron wrote: post #6

Imagine being able to re-watch your lectures online when studying for an exam...that would be great. It is fantastic that such lectures are being put online for the use of anyone.

Imagine being unprivileged enough to be born in a third-world country and not even have a chance to pay your application fee for higher education. If you're bright enough and have Internet access you can still learn from the best and maybe prepare yourself and earn a scholarship in the future.

You can take a very broad definiton of 'third-world country' and this is still true.

Re: MIT Lisp lecture from '86. wow.

#25

Post by eru » Sat, Jan 26, 2008, 1:28 AM UTC

pchristensen wrote: post #23

ptn wrote: post #20

All the Intro to CS classes start the same: the teacher writes COMPUTER SCIENCE in the board and then says 'this is not a science and it is not about computers' and crosses them out.

Where do you think it came from?

Murray's Rule: Any country with "democratic" in the title isn't.

The same is true of 'sciences'.