Re: Conway's Game of Life (cellular automata)

[Michael Vanier <mvanier@bbb.caltech.edu>]

> From: Matthias Felleisen <matthias@ccs.neu.edu>
> Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2001 14:27:46 -0500 (EST)
> 
> 
>   We're bucking a very strongly entrenched C culture here, and it's been
>   tough sledding.  Hopefully next year will be easier.
> 
> Then you're asking the wrong kinds of questions for a final. 
> A student who knows nothing but C or C++ from 3 years of high
> school should never be able to pass an introductory course
> based on HtDP. 
> 
> -- Matthias
> 

Huh?  I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic or serious.  If the
latter, then as you know, we can't just fail people willy-nilly because of
the sin of having C backgrounds (although we did in fact fail several
people this year for poor performance).  We get a lot of people who claim
(probably truthfully) that they've been programming since they were 5, or
9, or whatever (no, I'm not exaggerating), and invariably it's exclusively
in imperative languages.  One of these individuals learned scheme very
readily and was one of our top students.  Some of the others have a harder
time.

Mike