[plt-scheme] Examples of Scheme (or Lisp) in real-world

On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 12:00 AM, Shriram Krishnamurthi <sk at cs.brown.edu> wrote:
> PS: At some level, if you are trying to play the game of having to
> convince your students, you've lost the battle.  Your focus should be
> on trying to not lose the war also.  I find that there is no value in
> being defensive.  Is your curriculum engaging?  Is it hard?  And if
> so, is this what your students are cut out for?


    Looking at what happens in the programming world (and I use the
term programming to differentiate it from computer science), meaning
it's so easy for anyone to do something eye catching or at least
immediate, I almost have no argument against this commodity-zation of
programming. Many students say that they don't need to learn even
basic algorithms as all of them are already implemented in a library,
and their interest is just to build something. (If I ask thew what
exactly do they want to build, they are unable to describe that
"something"...)

    About the curriculum it's not that engaging... It just a normal CS
curriculum (not geared towards engineering) with a sprinkle of
everything. (I think we somehow comply with the ACM and IEEE
recommendations.) (We are a university in Eastern Europe :) ) And
about the students, some are up to the task, and for some I would
recommend another faculty.


> On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 3:50 PM, Ciprian Dorin, Craciun
> <ciprian.craciun at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 10:32 PM, Shriram Krishnamurthi <sk at cs.brown.edu> wrote:
>>> You might find the links in the README for my course last fall worth
>>> providing to your students:
>>>
>>> http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs019/2009/readme
>>>
>>> Shriram
>>
>>
>>    Thanks for the pointer. Unfortunately there is a little problem
>> with this... I've tried that three weeks ago... No change... :) :) :)
>>
>>    Below is the contents of the first section of my first laboratory
>> (the links are missing from the text as I've copy pasted, but at the
>> end I've also put my lab link). Indeed what you say there fits
>> perfectly as a case pro functional programming (pro Lisp).
>> Unfortunately we need a lot of good will from our students to actually
>> read and understand all these ideas. (Maybe a quiz from all those good
>> essays... :) :) )
>>
>>    Thanks again,
>>    Ciprian.
>>
>>
>> ~~~~
>> Optional (but highly recommended) reading
>>
>> The following essays are stolen from Shriram Krishnamurthi [ edited:
>> here is the link to your readme ]:
>>
>>    * Beating the Averages, by Paul Graham;
>>    * Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years, by Peter Norvig;
>>    * The Perils of JavaSchools, by Joel Spolsky;
>> ~~~~
>> http://beta.wikiversity.org/wiki/Functional_programming_--_2009-2010_--_info.uvt.ro/Laboratory/Notes_1