Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Adventures in Advanced Symbolic Programming

groups.csail.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–9 of 9 posts

Re: Adventures in Advanced Symbolic Programming

#3

Post by ReadFList »

>Students should have significant programming experience in Scheme, Common Lisp, Haskell, CAML or other "functional" language.

>This subject is appropriate for undergraduates who have the prerequisite experience. I know that the MIT have different standards than the rest of us, but how many students even meet this criteria?

Re: Adventures in Advanced Symbolic Programming

#4

Post by Jtsummers »

ReadFList wrote: post #3

>Students should have significant programming experience in Scheme, Common Lisp, Haskell, CAML or other "functional" language. >This subject is appropriate for undergraduates who have the prerequisite experience. I know that the MIT have different standards than the rest of us, but how many students even meet this criteria?

Depends on the university. Some place functional languages in the initial 2-4 course sequence which would make this an appropriate course for their students. Many others relegate functional languages to a "programming paradigms" course, which would make it less appropriate for their students.

Re: Adventures in Advanced Symbolic Programming

#5

Post by gumby »

ReadFList wrote: post #3

>Students should have significant programming experience in Scheme, Common Lisp, Haskell, CAML or other "functional" language. >This subject is appropriate for undergraduates who have the prerequisite experience. I know that the MIT have different standards than the rest of us, but how many students even meet this criteria?

Quite a few as it's an "OR" not an "AND". Maybe not that many frosh, but it's a graduate class.

I took quite a few grad classes in my last two academic years at the institute. And I even did OK in some of them. At least back then you could register for almost anything if you could get the professor to believe you wouldn't hold things back. I could imagine that hasn't changed.

Re: Adventures in Advanced Symbolic Programming

#6

Post by a0-prw »

ReadFList wrote: post #3

>Students should have significant programming experience in Scheme, Common Lisp, Haskell, CAML or other "functional" language. >This subject is appropriate for undergraduates who have the prerequisite experience. I know that the MIT have different standards than the rest of us, but how many students even meet this criteria?

They have a "Don't Panic - guide for the perplexed" which includes advice about getting an editor ffs.

Nobody who has significant experience in any programming language or even in life in general needs that.

Learn to spot bullshit.

Re: Adventures in Advanced Symbolic Programming

#7

Post by buza »

ReadFList wrote: post #3

>Students should have significant programming experience in Scheme, Common Lisp, Haskell, CAML or other "functional" language. >This subject is appropriate for undergraduates who have the prerequisite experience. I know that the MIT have different standards than the rest of us, but how many students even meet this criteria?

I took this class with zero functional programming exposure as a grad student, fwiw

Re: Adventures in Advanced Symbolic Programming

#8

Post by eindiran »

ReadFList wrote: post #3

>Students should have significant programming experience in Scheme, Common Lisp, Haskell, CAML or other "functional" language. >This subject is appropriate for undergraduates who have the prerequisite experience. I know that the MIT have different standards than the rest of us, but how many students even meet this criteria?

At the university I went to, all intro to CS classes were taught in a functional language: Scheme for the standard intro classes and SML/Haskell for the honors intro classes. I imagine that this true at a significant number of universities.
Post reply on HN