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by 8ren 5694 days ago
And Sussman switched to python. Religious wars are for followers, not Creators.
3 comments

Sorry but do you have sources to back up your assertion?

I took a class with Prof. Sussman, and even worked as an undergraduate researcher for a summer, and I know for a fact that his current work is still being done in MIT Scheme. The classes that he teaches currently Adventures in Symbolic programming, and Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics are also in MIT Scheme.

Finally, when I asked him about his opinion on Python and he put it this way "they wanted to have a language that they could use everywhere and also have it work with robots [describing the new intro to EECS course at MIT] so they picked Python."

So I strongly doubt the veracity of your statement. I think you're confusing MIT EECS department's switch to python in many classes as a sign that Prof. Sussman has personally switched to Python, which is very misleading.

No, just referencing a well-known event; but it seems you're right that he's not teaching that course any more http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=531490

However, he did say that starting off with python makes an undergraduate’s initial experiences maximally productive in the current environment. http://cemerick.com/2009/03/24/why-mit-now-uses-python-inste...

fun fact: norvig switched to python (for his textbook) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1803815

It's horses for courses (or ophidia for courses in this case).

Ah, the sweet irony of needless capitalization in this context…
Ok, but what is he using now? A more (easily) extensible, more flexible editor?

Or are the principles which have driven the design of Emacs not valid anymore? A C core with Lisp for the non-performance critical parts. That is modern, agile design right there.