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by calibraxis 4577 days ago
I get the impression Lisp tended to be taught awfully, uninspiringly. Maybe even worse than other programming languages. Cheating sounds like a reasonable response to such a farce of "education"; sad to hear when exposure to Lisp is a soul-crushing experience.

I've seen a few old AI books where Lisp code is formatted unreadably. I wonder why.
2 comments
Jtsummers 4577 days ago
Georgia Tech, one of the top schools in the US, couldn't even teach lisp. They tried scheme with SICP (IIRC, not sure what else would have been used in 2001). It ended with a major cheating scandal [1]. I was convinced at the time the issue was a lack of understanding on the parts of the TAs. Very few of them had a background in scheme, it was the blind leading the blind according to friends who had started that year (2001, I started in 2000). Since so many students took intro to computing and there were only a few lecturers, the TAs had to do the bulk of the real instruction (that is, non-200+ student lectures). This resulted (at least for a time) in a fragmenting of the introductory programming material, and it leaving the hands of the College of Computing. Non-CS/EE/CMPE engineering students ended up in courses using matlab, without ever actually studying algorithm design/analysis (which is what CS 1311/1321/1511/whatever other numbers they'd used previously) used to cover.

[1] http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2002/01/cheating-scanda...

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rayiner 4577 days ago
At least as far as I can tell, the problem was that they required everyone to learn scheme, including the non-CS majors.
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Jtsummers 4577 days ago
I don't think that was the problem, but it was a problem. I still contend the inability of the instructors to do their job was the problem. If the TAs had been prepared to teach scheme, and not come out of a year with a background in pseudocode (based on Pascal for CS 1311/1321/1511/too many other numbers) and Java (CS 1312/1322/1512/too many more numbers), but instead had a background in functional programming and scheme in particular, they might have been able to help their students out. That transition period from the pseudocode based intro to computing to the scheme/SICP based course should have been more gradual. Which leaves the ultimate failure on the part of the faculty who decided on an abrupt transition for their students, and ultimately failed the students in the process.
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malandrew 4577 days ago
The Little Schemer is think is one of the most inspiring ways to learn. Truly a book every software engineer should enjoy.
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protomyth 4577 days ago
The sequel books are also work looking at (The Seasoned Schemer, The Reasoned Schemer).
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