From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 10db24,7b27d2a61b42c7a5 X-Google-Attributes: gid10db24,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,7fb761492573daee X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 103d24,62365f05674f2ca3 X-Google-Attributes: gid103d24,public From: sperber@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de (Michael Sperber [Mr. Preprocessor]) Subject: Re: No top schools use Ada Date: 1995/04/19 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 101233295 distribution: world references: <3mq0jd$r10@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com> organization: Wilhelm-Schickard-Institut / Programmierung newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.edu,comp.lang.scheme Date: 1995-04-19T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: >>>>> "Robert" == Robert P Goldman writes: Robert> [ ... ] Robert> But I'm curious --- and let me just offer the futile wish that I can Robert> do this without starting a religious war --- given the situation in Robert> the languages world now, are there reasons aside from textbook, Robert> etc. (that are peripheral to the language itself) for using Scheme Robert> over ML as an intro programming language? I regularly hack in both Scheme and SML. SML has - as both a teaching and, in some instances, as a programming language - some serious shortcomings, IMHO: - parametric polymorphism is great, but heavy on newbies - type inference often separates the location of the cause of a typing bug, and the location of an error message which makes often it hard for newbies (and for me ...) to see what caused an error - SML semantics has some quirks which are almost impossible to grok if you don't have a formal background already (such as the much-discussed problem with val ... and ...) Having said that, Scheme is a much more lightweight language which does not sick as much baggage about syntax, a typing system, currying etc. on the student. Admittedly, it's got serious shortcomings as a development language. However, everyone who knows Scheme, has, in my experience, very little trouble dealing with SML. -- Cheers =8-} Chipsy