<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META content="text/html; charset=us-ascii" http-equiv=Content-Type> <META name=GENERATOR content="MSHTML 8.00.7600.16535"></HEAD> <BODY style="WORD-WRAP: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space"> <DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=734563013-03052010><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial>What has to be teached depends on your audience and your goals. If your audience consists of people aiming to be professional programmers or IT engeneers, I think your goal should be, in principle, to teach them ALL languages (assemblers included) plus a good deal of arithmetics and mathematics. Is it possible to learn all languages? For a normal person, of course not. But what you can do is to give insight in different levels and approaches to computing and how these levels and approaches are related to paradigmas. If my presumptions are correct,. Scheme is a good choice to start with, I think, for it allows programming in all sorts of paradigmas.</FONT></SPAN></DIV> <DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=734563013-03052010><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial></FONT></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=734563013-03052010><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial>As an example: I remember well that as a consultant (long ago) a COBOL programmer came to me with a program that did not work correctly. I knew almost nothing of COBOL, but within 5 minutes the problem was solved just by asking the costumer what he was trying to do. At first the customer did not trust my having no profound knowledge of COBOL. Just ask questions: what do you want and what do you expect (something like HtDP's method avant la lettre) Yes, the customer found the answer to his problem by himself just by being pressed to think about what he wanted and expected.</FONT></SPAN></DIV> <DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=734563013-03052010><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial></FONT></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=734563013-03052010><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial>Jos</FONT></SPAN></DIV> <DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=734563013-03052010><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial></FONT></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=734563013-03052010><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial></FONT></SPAN> </DIV><BR> <DIV dir=ltr lang=en-us class=OutlookMessageHeader align=left> <HR tabIndex=-1> <FONT size=2 face=Tahoma><B>From:</B> plt-scheme-bounces@list.cs.brown.edu [mailto:plt-scheme-bounces@list.cs.brown.edu] <B>On Behalf Of </B>Samuel Williams<BR><B>Sent:</B> 03 May 2010 14:18<BR><B>To:</B> plt-scheme@list.cs.brown.edu<BR><B>Subject:</B> [plt-scheme] Teaching Scheme<BR></FONT><BR></DIV> <DIV></DIV> <DIV>Dear Friends,<BR><BR>I'm looking for some help from the Scheme community. I hope this is the right place to ask for information.<BR><BR>I'm putting together a website aimed at high school students and teachers, and would like to make sure the following page is as good as possible:</DIV> <DIV><BR></DIV> <DIV><SPAN style="WHITE-SPACE: pre" class=Apple-tab-span></SPAN><A href="http://programming.dojo.net.nz/languages/scheme/index">http://programming.dojo.net.nz/languages/scheme/index</A></DIV> <DIV><BR></DIV> <DIV> <DIV>In particular, "Why would I learn this language?" section needs to have a few paragraphs. I don't use Scheme so I hoped that you could provide the main reasons why Scheme is a language someone would want to learn about.</DIV> <DIV><BR></DIV> <DIV>It would also be great if someone could rewrite the Scheme source code example so that it is as close as possible to the C implementation:</DIV> <DIV><BR></DIV> <DIV><SPAN style="WHITE-SPACE: pre" class=Apple-tab-span><A href="http://programming.dojo.net.nz/languages/c/index">http://programming.dojo.net.nz/languages/c/index</A></SPAN></DIV> <DIV><BR></DIV> <DIV>I understand that Scheme is very different from C, and uses different paradigms, so it doesn't have to be identical, however it would be great if it worked in generally the same way. It would be great if you could include comments explaining how it works and what is happening (like the C example).</DIV> <DIV><BR></DIV></DIV> <DIV>Any other suggestions or ideas for the Scheme page would be fantastic, and any suggestions to other pages in general is also very helpful.<BR><BR><SPAN style="WHITE-SPACE: pre" class=Apple-tab-span></SPAN><A href="http://programming.dojo.net.nz/">http://programming.dojo.net.nz/</A><BR><BR>Kind regards,<BR>Samuel</DIV></BODY></HTML>