[plt-scheme] teachpacks vs. require

Teachpacks were invented for a particular setting with a particular purpose, but yes, real programs should linguistically document where things come from. 



On Jan 11, 2010, at 9:58 PM, Lee Spector wrote:

> 
> I guess what bothers me about teachpacks is that I don't want to forget about the ingredients necessary to make something work, or for my students to have any mystery about what's necessary. On a more practical level people are always re-installing things on our lab machines, and students often move their code between lab machines and their own machines, and they submit code that I will run on my own differently-configured machine, etc. With require the requirements are explicit in the code and not hidden in one machine's configuration state. I'm sure teachpacks have their value -- I doubt I'm a typical case either with respect to my teaching or my own programming -- but for what it's worth I do find them to be confusing and maybe even counterproductive.
> 
> -Lee
> 
> 
> On Jan 11, 2010, at 9:24 PM, Mark Engelberg wrote:
> 
>> Teachpacks tend to persist as students create new files, so you can
>> "add once and then forget about it", as opposed to require, where
>> you'd need to enter it in every file.
> 
> --
> Lee Spector, Professor of Computer Science
> School of Cognitive Science, Hampshire College
> 893 West Street, Amherst, MA 01002-3359
> lspector at hampshire.edu, http://hampshire.edu/lspector/
> Phone: 413-559-5352, Fax: 413-559-5438
> 
> Check out Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines:
> http://www.springer.com/10710 - http://gpemjournal.blogspot.com/
>