[plt-scheme] behaviour of void?

On Feb 5, 2009, at 5:51 PM, Prabhakar Ragde wrote:

> Shriram Krishnamurthi wrote:
>
>> It's not too hard at all.  Our courses routinely assign these  
>> kinds of
>> assignments.  But we also have to train our students to understand
>> modern systems.
>> SICP was not written for an interactive (in the sense of a
>> computational model) era.  The world effort is an strong attempt to
>> make functional programming just as relevant to modern computation.
>
> Now who is setting up dichotomies with loaded use of the word  
> "modern"?
>
> You and your co-authors, in "Structure and Interpretation of the  
> Computer Science Curriculum", rightly criticize SICP for requiring  
> too much domain knowledge. One obvious use of world.ss is in  
> simulation of physical phenomena -- but this requires domain  
> knowledge in physics at least (maybe even fluid dynamics), not to  
> mention knowing how to deal with computation using inexact numbers,  
> something I would rather avoid in first year.
>
> There must be non-gaming uses of world.ss that use discrete  
> mathematics and have serious computer science content. I just have  
> difficulty, personally, coming up with them. --PR


1. Recall that universe.ss is replacing world.ss.

2. How about a chat server? It's well within reach for universe.ss.  
Students can design their own features for the last few weeks of the  
course: type Hindi at one end, see German at the other :-)

-- Matthias