Seems indicative of shifting expectations/demands that SICP used to be freshman course book; now it's considered "super advanced reading" :/
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As much as I hate being a "people should pay their dues" person… sheesh.
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I know new MIT CS grads who haven't read it. Which could be okay, except they didn't learn the concepts in other courses either. :/
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speaking for me, i didn't realize (& nobody said) it was supposed to be difficult when i took it. TAs were very supportive.
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possibly unrelated topic but there is important work in tuning freshman cs programs for people from diverse backgrounds
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This is very interesting! Any references I should read? I'm very aware the SICP is rough on non-math-ish folks.
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Many schools seem have shifted towards "practicality" like Java, giving up some theory, but fail as vocational schools.
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They don't teach the practice of programming, versioning, API design and working in teams, or the metacircular evaluator.
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What's the best way to learn those concepts now? Is it still SICP?
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I don't know of a better way, which bums me out, because SICP is not perfect.
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that might be a good thing though. What portion of engineer pipeline issues have been caused by esoteric pedagogy in CS 1/2
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Yep, great point! I don't think the solution is not to teach the concepts at all, but rather to teach them more carefully.
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