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MIT Lisp lecture from '86. wow.

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Re: MIT Lisp lecture from '86. wow.

#2

Post by aston »

Gerry Sussman... Good piece of trivia: In addition to creating the class, he taught the last (ever) offering of 6.001 last term at MIT.

Another piece of trivia: Hal Abelson, the co-creator, was one of the big guys being 6.001's replacement (now in Python).

Re: MIT Lisp lecture from '86. wow.

#5

Post by brlewis »

I took 6.001 in Spring '87. I loved it, aside from the slow computers in the lab. I pulled an all-nighter on a Saturday for a problem set not due until Thursday so as to avoid the crowds.

After the class was over I didn't use Scheme for another 10 years, but did everything in C. Scheme was just too slow in 1987. Both the language implementations and the hardware have come a long way. I use Scheme all the time now, and there are numerous popular languages, notably PHP and Ruby, that are slower than Scheme today.

Re: MIT Lisp lecture from '86. wow.

#7

Post by luccastera »

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.

At Georgia Tech, they filmed a lot of lectures and you can go back to the library and watch the tapes there. I found it to be one of the best ways to study for an exam. It's funny how the second time you watch a lecture, it all seems so easy to understand.

Re: MIT Lisp lecture from '86. wow.

#8

Post by anaphoric »

Nice lecture... I am sending it on to my students.

But did anyone get a load of that old lisp machine? You could just feel how sluggish it must have been :-)

20 years on and things are much snappier! Thanks Intel and AMD!

Re: MIT Lisp lecture from '86. wow.

#9

Post by mcxx »

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.

Well, it's very common at my university (Faculty of Information Technology, Brno university of technology: http://www.fit.vutbr.cz). We're in the 21st century after all. Lectures are streamed in real-time and also recorded and published later.
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