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Comment by yorwba | Hacker News Reader

Theoretically, all the same concepts could be taught in Python as well, but I doubt they are doing that. Many of the more mind-bending things that are made relatively easy in Scheme due to the uniform syntax and small core actually become much more complex to do for Python (e.g. writing a self-interpreter).

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Yes. As Perlis put it:

   54. Beware of the Turing tar-pit
       in which everything is possible 
       but nothing of interest is easy.

Unlike Scheme, Python requires extensive research of the documentation in order to get the correct syntax and semantics even for the simple code in SICP. It's not just simple facts like operator precedence, it's the conceptual baggage of statements versus expressions. It's the one true way of iteration rather than recursion. It's the arbitrary distinctions of a core language, built in functions, a standard library and PiP. And Python has objects just because. But everything isn't an object.

SICP was an introductory programming class (though obviously being used at MIT allowed certain assumptions).

The reason why is because in the 80s it was useful to build up programs from scratch. So you could build an introductory course around that and even use an arcane language like Scheme, which the students are bound to almost never encounter in real-world usage, to illustrate the principles. These days, to teach someone real-world software development, you have to show them how to find and use a library that does what they want, or maintain an already-existing code base -- use cases for which Python is a much better fit. Building a program up from scratch is almost never done.

This shift of focus from fundamental computer science to "real-world software development" training seems to be short-sighted and more appropriate for a vocational school or a coder bootcamp rather than a place like MIT.

> an arcane language like Scheme, which the students are bound to almost never encounter in real-world usage

Posted on a site running on MzScheme.

>> an arcane language like Scheme, which the students are bound to almost never encounter in real-world usage

>Posted on a site running on MzScheme.

Posted on a site running MzScheme, that probably tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people, read often, get useful info from, that is of help to them in the real world, and that many people get jobs from.

In the 1980s, people used libraries and maintained already existing code bases in "real-world software development", too.

Computer science education isn't just vocational training for software development gruntwork, though.

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