[dangrover]

My undergrad intro class used this. At the time I found it patronizing and silly and artificially limiting, having coded before (the design recipe, the different "levels" of scheme).

But I saw some of the wisdom in the approach when I later tutored the class. People would try to rush into coding problems without doing real analysis of what the cases would be, and had a foggy notion of different parts of program having a "contract". HTDP and the design recipe makes that muscle memory for beginners which is pretty nifty.

[stephenhuey]

Matthias Felleisen was my professor at Rice 2 decades ago and I can still hear his distinctive voice clearly in my head! I too was resistant at first having done some programming in high school, but I wish I could go back and tell myself to pay attention more. Now I know Matthias was both wise and passionate and that combination doesn’t show up in every CS class, so to this day I’m nostalgic for the way he introduced computer science.

[jasonjayr]

I was also a student of Prof Felleisen, and his class was both challenging and rewarding if you could stick with it.

Among other things, I learned one of my most memorable quips from him: "Don't put your ego in your code." Basically: don't consider attacks on the quality of your code as attacks on the quality of who you are. Learn, improve, and teach others the same.

[tacon]

Back when Felleisen was at Rice, he was the faculty sponsor for the Houston Java User Group. I attended some of those meetings, and Prof. Felleisen was mostly sitting quietly in the back of the room. Then a few years ago I ran across HtDP, and I am kicking myself for not noticing what I was missing. I should have dumped the Java meetings and sat in on his classes...

[qez]

Felleisen taught the first CS class I ever took. I think part of the point of the class was to mess with people who think they know what to do because they've coded before, when in actually they are now on even footing with everyone else. In my position, I was glad for it. Everyone was perfectly intuitive!

[vsnf]

I must be the black sheep of this thread, because I had a completely different experience. Professor Felleisen was never my professor directly, but he did oversee a few of the introductory courses I took, and was very present and had a heavy hand in many of the advanced courses. I also went to him for a number of office hour sessions.

He came off as incredibly self-absorbed and at times, borderline hostile. A sibling poster quoted him as saying "don't put your ego in your code", but in the 4+ years I dealt with him, he was nothing but ego.

I don't doubt his intelligence and obviously he's a very accomplished individual, but I just don't see what everyone else saw in him.

[wsylex]

There are some people who completely gave up of Racket just because of him (take a look of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wY7FBtr7_c ). And, speaking of ego, just take a look at the author list on the cover of this book: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BRtef96CcAA54cS.jpg

Notice the font size of his name, versus the font size of the students who actually wrote the book and everything will be clear to you!

[Bost]

Regarding the font thing - saying "everything will be clear" and providing no other information clarifies nothing.

Except that, thank you for that YT link. A critical opinion, when well stated is worth its weight in gold.

[rscho]

Oh yes, font sizes say a lot about people! This is so clear to me now.

How does one increase font size on HN? I feel I deserve a larger font for my username!

[tudelo]

Absolutely. I went through the same thing.