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From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.edu
Subject: Re: Abelson & Sussman
Message-ID: <34746@news.Think.COM>
Date: 16 Mar 90 23:19:35 GMT
References: <3793@tukki.jyu.fi>
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Reply-To: barmar@nugodot.think.com.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
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Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
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Markku Sakkinen critiqued the Abelson & Sussman text because it doesn't
discuss any other programming languages other than Lisp (actually, it uses
Scheme, a Lisp-like language).  His complaint would be valid if this were
the text for a course on programming languages, but that's not what the
course "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" is about.  The
purpose of this course is to teach computer scientists how to think about
programs, and how programs are executed by computers.  Scheme is used as
the language for examples.  The purpose of the course is *not* to teach
students how to program in Scheme, but the student needs to learn Scheme in
order to understand the examples and problem sets, and to do the lab work.
When I took the course there was only one lecture devoted to programming in
Scheme (actually, when I took it we were using a hybrid between Scheme and
Lisp called ULISP), as well as a few recitations and tutorials; the rest of
the course was about program structure and interpretation.

An analogy would be with the introductory electrical engineering course.
In order to do the lab work for that course you have to learn how to
breadboard circuits.  You wouldn't fault the course notes because they
didn't teach how to design and implement etched circuit boards, would you?
In both cases, the particular programming language and circuit
implementation technology are simply tools to be used to apply the concepts
being taught.

--
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
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