Re: peasant revolt against DrScheme!

[sperber@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de (Michael Sperber [Mr. Preprocessor])]

>>>>> "Jos" == Jacob J A Koot <jja.koot@wolmail.nl> writes:

Jos> Answering a question before it is asked is
Jos> sermoning like a prophet in the desert.

Excellent point.

Jos> Why do we need first class procedures and continuations? It's
Jos> difficult to explain to someone who has never felt the need of
Jos> them, be it to make things easier or to make things more
Jos> beautiful.

Well, that's actually not so hard.  We just make a point of using them
all the time without making a big fuss over them.  At the latest,
students get it when we show them how to implement OOP with
first-class procedures, and when she show them how to implement
exceptions and coroutines with continuations.

The bigger problem is when you're trying to fit a software-design
course into a larger curriculum:  In our case, it's the only chance we
have for teaching kids structuring techniques for large software.
Unfortunately, a traditional lecture is not exactly the right forum
for demonstrating these things.  So I jump up and down all the time,
asking the kids to imagine bigger projects with many people.  It's a
crutch.  Mostly it sort of works.  Sometimes it doesn't.

-- 
Cheers =8-} Mike
Friede, Völkerverständigung und überhaupt blabla