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From: NORVIG@Teak.Berkeley.EDU (Peter Norvig)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: RE: Language Use
Message-ID: <12253@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 22 Mar 91 17:14:28 GMT
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In-reply-to: <1991Mar15.134054.6830@pdn.paradyne.com>

There seems to be a consensus that the first thing to do is
decide what concepts you want to teach, and after that, the
choice of a language is not as important.  I agree.  

But after the concepts are chosen, it is also crucial to find a
text book that presents those concepts well.  For those who
decide that they would like to teach the principles of Computer
Science rather than the details of some language's syntax,
Abelson and Sussman's "Structure and Interpretation of Computer
Programs" fits the bill.  This text happens to use Scheme, but
in my opinion it is so much better than competing texts that I
would use it even if it's language were Fortran, Cobol, or
anything else.  (Of course, I think that its not just a
coincidence that it uses Scheme; many of the important concepts
could not be presented so well in other languages.)

- Peter Norvig