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From: nessus@mit-eddie.UUCP (Doug Alan)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: Object oriented languages
Message-ID: <2115@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 13-Jun-84 21:33:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.2115
Posted: Wed Jun 13 21:33:37 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 14-Jun-84 07:07:48 EDT
References: <1979@mit-eddie.UUCP> <268@harvard.UUCP>
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 32

>	From genrad!wjh12!harvard!kevin Tue Jun 12 14:24:17 1984

>	I do not believe that the advantages of teaching SCHEME outweigh
>	the need for more resources or the fact that the other courses
>	here (and the jobs that the students want the experience for)
>	use more traditional languages (like C).  I think the couple of
>	weeks exposure the students now get is enough to at least let
>	them see that there are other ways of programming; the details
>	can wait for a higher level course.

I have taken both the Harvard and the MIT introductory computer science
courses.  After the Harvard course (which I took while in high school --
it taught Macro-11 assembly language, Lisp, and C), I felt that I had
learned how to engineer small programs.  Sort of interesting, but I
still wanted to be a physicist.  After I took the MIT course, I felt
that I had learned a great deal of beautiful, clean, and powerful
concepts.  It was a joy taking the class, and every assignment was bliss
to work on, even if the computer was overloaded and I had to do my work
at 3 am.  It converted me from physics to computer science.  You'd think
that Harvard, the liberal arts school, would go for the beautiful
concepts, while MIT, the technology school, would go for the
down-to-earth engineering.  But life is strange.  One of the things that
makes MIT such a great school is that there are many people here who
realize that beautiful concepts and engineering can complement one
another.
-- 
				-Doug Alan
				 mit-eddie!nessus
				 Nessus@MIT-MC

				"What does 'I' mean"?