Re: [TUHS] ratfor vibe

On Tue, Feb 1, 2022 at 1:19 PM Noel Chiappa <jnc(a)mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote: Interesting .. I trust you, but I had thought ( famously) you folks had required a LISP and/or Scheme in the required "intro to computers" course using the Gerald Sussman and Hal Abelson "Structure of Computer Programs" [Scheme IIRC] until it was finally replaced a few years ago with a Python based one [I thought it was tjt that told me that, but I could easily have been misled/misunderstood]. FWIW: Through the 60s, the early and into the later 70s, CMU used to call its 15-104 "Intro to Computer Programming" and was based on batch (card) computing using FTN4, later WATFIV. They used a number of books. The book I had was from Waterloo and other than being blue and black in color, I remember little from it - since I already knew how and the TA let me take 'self-taught' by turning in assignments/taking the tests without going to class. Like Freshman Physics and Calc, all intro science and engineering majors were required to take it however, since the engineering depts were sure what you would see when you graduated was FTN based code [which was probably true for the more pure Science types]. Much later (many years after I left) the CS Dept finally convinced Mat Sci, Chem E and Mech E to allow the course to be taught using Pascal. I think they use either Java or Python now, but I haven't checked. On the other hand, at UCB the intro course was called CS-40 "Introduction to Computing" which was required of all Letters and Science Majors. When I helped to teach it in the early 80s as a grad student, we could only handle a thousand students and turned away over another thousand [for a required undergrad course]. We used Clancy and Cooper's "Oh Pascal" as the text and the UCB pi interpreter on the 11/70s running a flavor of V7 / 2BSD. Before I got there, they must have taught it on the CDC machine using FTN, but I'm not sure.