Xref: utzoo comp.lang.misc:4488 comp.edu:3099 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!lfcs!nick From: nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Nick Rothwell) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.edu Subject: Re: Abelson & Sussman Message-ID: <2895@castle.ed.ac.uk> Date: 16 Mar 90 17:17:37 GMT References: <3793@tukki.jyu.fi> Reply-To: nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Nick Rothwell) Followup-To: comp.lang.misc Organization: Jenny Agutter Appreciation Society of Edinburgh Lines: 31 In-reply-to: sakkinen@tukki.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen) In article <3793@tukki.jyu.fi>, sakkinen@tukki (Markku Sakkinen) writes: >The book contains a lot of stuff and may be very good in several >aspects. However, it is a strong entrant in the "most biassed >programming textbook ever published" competition. >This especially regarding that, according to the Preface, it >"... is the entry-level subject in computer science at the >Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is required of all >students at MIT who major in electrical engineering or in >computer science ..." So? A large number of "introductory programming texts" are pure PASCAL or something, with no mention at all of other languages. I think Scheme is a lot more suitable for illustrating principles of program semantics and evaluation than PASCAL is. Shame it's syntax is so unreadable :-) >Other programming languages than Lisp are mentioned only in short >footnotes or not at all, and mostly in a negative light. I agree that this would be good, but a good overview of other languages would be very time and space-consuming, and is probably best left for another course and/or book. >Markku Sakkinen Nick. -- Nick Rothwell, Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh. nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk !mcsun!ukc!lfcs!nick ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ A prop? ...or wings? A prop? ...or wings? A prop?