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

[MJ Ray <markj@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>]

On Wed, Dec 26, 2001 at 03:26:13PM -0800, Michael Vanier wrote:
> > From: Matthias Felleisen <matthias@ccs.neu.edu>
> > 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. 
> 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 [...]

No, you can fail them for not learning.  Note the "nothing but" in what
Matthais wrote.  I think the implication is that those students who assume
that they know all about programming already and don't follow the course at
all should almost certainly fail.

Of course, maybe the fact that these people who know all about programming
actually have to learn something new is part of the reason why they develop
such pathological hatred for Scheme.