[boojing]

It was the book that was used in my first programming class in college (Northeastern). One of the authors, Matthias, was part of the course staff. It's definitely interesting as it differs from most non-functional programming intro course books and sets up a more rigorous foundation for students to use when they go on to learn about class based design with Java in the second semester.

I guess it might be a bit strange to think that we don't encounter iteration until the latter part of our second semester but it does make student get really familiar with recursion.

Not sure how I would have handled it if I had to work through it alone but I would at least recommend people to give the book a look.

[readyp1]

Similar situation here... one of the core Racket dev team members (i.e. PLT) works here, and we use HtDP in our one-semester Intro to CS (211) class. They specifically advertise it to those who have little to no past programming experience, with the only prereq being high school precalc; it's pretty rigorous and definitely covers a lot of stuff that my past programming textbooks didn't at all (e.g. recursion out the wazoo, abstraction). Here, it sets up for our 212 class, Intro to Software Systems, which is another semester class, all done in Java and about OOP. Seems like a mildly jarring switch if you ask me.

Even with my past experience, I still needed a ton of help from professors and other students. It's kinda daunting to think about doing it alone, without much help.