Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!m.cs.uiuc.edu!gillies
From: gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Which language to teach first?
Message-ID: <4200017@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 10 Aug 89 04:14:00 GMT
References: <4218@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Lines: 34
Nf-ID: #R:portia.Stanford.EDU:4218:m.cs.uiuc.edu:4200017:000:1655
Nf-From: m.cs.uiuc.edu!gillies    Aug  9 23:14:00 1989


/* Written 12:02 pm  Aug  8, 1989 by tbc@hp-lsd.HP.COM in m.cs.uiuc.edu:comp.edu */
|From gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu Sat Aug  5 16:38:00 1989
|................................................  Also, realize that
|MIT is biased towards producing AI researchers.

I must record my disagreement with this statement.  Like gillies (whatever his
or her real name is), I also got a degree from MIT.  My diploma reads
"Computer Science and Engineering" (VI-3, for the number fanatics in the
audience :-).  I feel that I came out very well-prepared for a software
engineering career and not well-prepared to be an AI programmer.  The
curriculum is split between "traditional" software engineering topics (6.170
and 6.035) and AI (6.034, etc.).  (A few EE courses are thrown in just in case
we have to deal with hardware someday -- an excellent idea, IMHO.)  But the
intent was *not* to teach students how to become AI programmers.  It just so
happens that the MIT CS department believes AI is a significant part of
computer science.

I'm responding here to try to prevent readers from concluding that Sussman and
Abelson are teaching AI just because they are from MIT and use a LISP language
dialect to embody the concepts they teach in their book.

As I said in my first posting -- the language doesn't matter.  Teach the
*concepts*.  Since you have to pick one first, use SCHEME.  It's good enough
for MIT freshmen.

|From jon@hanauma Thu Aug  3 00:15:02 1989
|AWK !

I didn't see the :-) in the posting, but I still can only respond with a
hearty hardy har, har.

(I like AWK, too.  I've even seen AWK used for AI! :-)
/* End of text from m.cs.uiuc.edu:comp.edu */