"Unfortunately, the use of Scheme and SICP quickly dwindled again in the early 1990s. After working with SICP and Scheme for a while, instructors started to complain. Some said that SICP's content was too difficult for students outside of MIT. Others blamed Scheme directly, claiming that functional programming in Scheme was too different from programming in other languages. Even the functional programming community criticized the SICP approach; around this time, Wadler wrote his Critique of SICP and Scheme (Wadler, 1987).
Nowadays the critics even include professors at MIT, where the book and the course have become legends. Jackson and Chapin, who both have significant experience teaching SICP at MIT, recently wrote that:
[f]rom an educational point of view, our experience suggests that undergraduate computer science courses should emphasize basic notions of modularity, specification, and data abstraction, and should not let these be displaced by more advanced topics, such as design patterns, object-oriented methods, concurrency, functional languages, and so on (Jackson & Chapin, 2000).
In short, SICP, Scheme, and functional programming don't prepare students properly for other programming courses and thus fail to meet a basic need."
You're right, however, that does not make you welcome here. We are well aware of the problem, but even if your role as a messenger will not get you shot here, it will not make you respected here either. Go away.
SICP is intended to expand your penismind while simultaneously propelling you to algorithmic zen.
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Anonymous2008-12-21 18:18
the guys who wrote that say right in the fucking paper that they know abel and suss, and involved them in the writing of the critic you fucking moron. they agree with most of the points the guy makes and they go on to say that although it failed at its intended purpose it is great anyway.
The book never lives up to all the hype surrounding it. In fact, of the over 50 people I know who had the misfortune to study out of it, none liked it. I imagine only a few crazy souls who care about nothing but dry computer language theory would even consider this worth reading.
Recursion and information hiding via procedural/object code is nothing mysterious and is taught in all other CS classes, so the text adds nothing new. It merely retells the same old obvious programming techniques using a very poorly designed language (Scheme) and using completely uneducational examples. In short, this book is an overrated waste of time. If you are familiar with structured programming in a language like C++, you won't get anything new out of this. In fact, any topic presented here is better learned elsewhere, since the text is just one of those poorly written books that try to be encyclopedic at the expense of being interesting and thorough.
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Anonymous2008-12-21 18:25
>>9
lol come on, can't you be a little less obvious in your trolling?
seriously, this paper was written in the 80's the opinions of it are no longer relevent.
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Anonymous2008-12-21 18:32
When I looked through the table of contents and saw the section on register machines, I wondered what cash registers had to do with programming
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Anonymous2008-12-21 18:33
"High school teachers who implement HTDP report similar success stories as colleges but in a less measurable manner. Still, the HTDP curriculum has had an interesting measurable effect concerning female students. Several instructors reported that female students like the HtDP curriculum exceptionally well. In a controlled experiment, an HTDP-trained instructor taught a conventional AP curriculum and the Scheme curriculum to the same three classes of student. Together the three classes consisted of over 70 students. While all students preferred our approach to programming, the preference among females was a stunning factor of four."
Chicks dig HTDP.
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Anonymous2008-12-21 18:37
>>13
people like you need to be lead out back and shot.
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Anonymous2008-12-21 18:42
>>12
"Unfortunately, the use of Scheme and SICP quickly dwindled again in the early 1990s."
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Anonymous2008-12-21 18:43
>>16
Interestingly, the 1990s is the period when the Sussman was having the most sex with the Julie Sussman.
There is a distinction between computer science and code monkey business. If you don't understand the point of what SICP teaches, then you have little ground for critiquing it.
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Anonymous2008-12-22 2:38
Some said that SICP's content was too difficult for students outside of MIT
Cry more, enterprise developers
Others blamed Scheme directly, claiming that functional programming in Scheme was too different from programming in other languages.
No shit, that's the point of having different programming paradigms! The functional paradigm is meant to make you think, as someone who starts off with "dumb" imperative languages (Basic variants are the worse) tends to become a robot who can't structure his shit.
should emphasize basic notions of modularity, specification, and data abstraction
and should not let these be displaced by more advanced topics, such as design patterns, object-oriented methods, concurrency, functional languages
Yeah, because learning a functional language isn't the best way to reach those goals, right? Oh, wait, specification, data abstraction and modularity is the whole point of SICP. Dumbasses.
>>25
Specification, data abstraction, and modularity is taught far more concisely and clearly in so many other books that have come out both before and after SICP.
>>29
Like Code Complete 2nd edition by Steve McConnell, published by MICRO$HAFT PRESS WHAT WOULD THEY KNOW ABOUT COMPUTING I COULD OUTCODE THE ENTIRE WINDOWS DEVELOPMENT TEAM WHEN I WAS 12