> I also find it interesting that most of us here are considering it as an > alternative to either C++ or Java, but aren't mentioning Scheme (which has > been an intro CS language at MIT for some time).
I love Scheme and LISP, and I actually considered using it as a CS1/CS0 language a few years ago. I even read the first couple of chapters of their Scheme textbook. But it's not a viable choice if you want to introduce modern programming practices to students. Scheme is great if you treat CS as an off-shoot of mathematics and ignore the applied aspects (such as the fact that there's a computer running running your code!), but most students are well-aware that Scheme is *not* the lingua franca of real-world programming. And the reality is (at least in my neighborhood) that the vast majority of CS students are interesting software engineering careers, and so a practical language like Python that shows how pure CS ideas can be made practical is ideal. I've spoken to a few teachers at a school that tried the Scheme-first approach, and the students generally *hated* it. I've talked to students who took a CS2 data structures and algorithms course in LISP, and they claimed to *hate* the course --- while at the same time saying "LISP was lots of fun!". Scheme is a great language for someone who is already hooked on CS, and is interested in certain abstract questions of computation. But it's just not useful or interesting enough to appeal to enough students. Toby _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
