Re: peasant revolt against DrScheme!

[Matthias Felleisen <matthias@cs.rice.edu>]

Yes, that's a well-known reaction. 

The instructor must clarify a few things from the beginning. 

1. Good programming is as difficult as good pharmacy. 

   Do you want a one-semester pharmacy student to fill your prescription? 

2. Programming languages change faster than some students' t-shirts. PL
   fashion certainly does. Therefore it is important to have a good
   foundation on to which one can build. 

   Do you want a job at the cutting edge or do you want to maintain legacy
   C code? 

3. Teaching a good foundation `a la TeachScheme!/HtDP doesn't have to
   conflict with showing students how easy it is to maintain CGI scripts
   and Web pages and who knows what with Scheme. 

   Our book site, htdp.org, will soon come with extended exercises that
   supplement HtDP just that way. 

Don't despair. But having said that, CalTech students are so smart, they
will mess up everything. :-)

-- Matthias