Article View: comp.lang.misc
Article #862Re: Abelson & Sussman
From: Nick Rothwell
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 1990 17:17
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 1990 17:17
31 lines
1949 bytes
1949 bytes
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 <Atlantic Ocean>!mcsun!ukc!lfcs!nick
~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~
A prop? ...or wings? A prop? ...or wings? A prop?
Technical Details
Message-ID:
<2895@castle.ed.ac.uk>Path:
arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!lfcs!nickReferences:
<3793@tukki.jyu.fi>Show Full Headers
Complete Article Headers
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!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)