[plt-scheme] Congratulations

Thanks Jos but this is all too much credit to TLL et al.

Based on my experience, the dialog method for learning is great for  
the intellectually engaged person, the explorer of ideas, the person  
who thinks using ones brain is more fun than anything else in the  
world. Hackers, like the people on this list, tend to fall into this  
camp, though they are somewhat odd (given my experience with people  
in other disciplines who I'd call 'explorers').

It does not seem to work all that great for the majority of standard  
students, though. Learning "naturally" fails to bring across why  
things work, how things generalize, what matters and in which  
contexts it may matter. That's why I wrote HtDP, which is TLL spelled  
out slowly and carefully.

-- Matthias







On Jul 30, 2008, at 4:56 PM, Jos Koot wrote:

>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marek Kubica"  
> <marek at xivilization.net>
> To: <plt-scheme at list.cs.brown.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2008 2:23 AM
> Subject: Re: [plt-scheme] Congratulations
>
>
> snip>
>> P.S.: Today I took a look at the Reasoned Schemer and have to admit
>> that the style is great. Too bad there is only a limited number of
>> books that are written in a dialogue form like this.
>
> Yes, the three Schemers are great books. They seem but to play, but  
> the books go deep into the matter. I find the 'playisch' style very  
> fruitful because the student is not made aware that he/she is  
> learning difficult things. This is very important. As a comparison:  
> children of very young age (say between 5 and 8 years old) have, by  
> nature, perfect tuning when singing their songs while playing. But  
> as they are sent to school and get lessons how to sing, the teacher  
> too easily presents the matter as a DIFFICULT thing. As a  
> consequence the perfect tuning is often gone within a few days. If  
> Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias Felleisen were music teachers, the  
> children would learn singing without forgetting what they already  
> are capable of by nature. (BTW: nowadays there is a good method for  
> music lessons that starts from the capabilities already present,  
> most importantly the naturally inherited capability of singing and  
> the capability of copying)
> Jos
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