[PRL] Of course our programming language can do this

[William D Clinger]

Matthias wrote:
> We need to use Scheme to teach a bigger idea than "Scheme" or  
> "programming" in the old sense. CS is the discipline of design. We  
> can bring across the beauty of it and students will be able to apply  
> the lessons they learned with (, define, ) lambda to Java etc. And  
> then they will look back and say "it was so much better in Scheme."
> 
> Last year a bunch of students asked John Clements at the end of the  
> Java semester how anyone could program with assignments and for-loops  
> and stuff after knowing Scheme. It's awful. Quote. And that's from  
> students who were in the summer-trailer section; the kids who didn't  
> get it the first time around.

Here's another data point:  When I taught the upper
division course on software development (CS U670)
last spring, students were allowed to use whatever
programming language they liked for the term project.

Not one of the teams chose Scheme or Lisp.  One team
chose Smalltalk.  Another chose MatLab, another Flash.
Several chose Visual Basic.  Most chose Java or C#.

Will