How has this worked out?
I'm particularly interested in hearing from MIT students: both those who took the introductory course with Scheme and those who took it with Python, and of the latter especially those who wound up learning Scheme and reading SICP later on, either at MIT or independently. Do you think you missed out? Was using Python instead of Scheme the right choice?
Insights from TA's and teachers also welcome.
[1] - https://www.wisdomandwonder.com/link/2110/why-mit-switched-from-scheme-to-python
[2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11628080
[3] - http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1840
[4] - http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3312
[5] - http://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/sicp.html
[6] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22994976
Scheme levels the playing field among incoming students, both those who've barely programmed and who've been programming since they were 14. It also provides a special kind of mind bender that challenged me in ways I still use today. Granted I work at a company that employs multiple functional programming languages.
Good engineers in time don't use python because they realize it attracts tech debt and cruft. I love python, and still use it for quick hacks and machine learning things. However, I'll defer to the one and only Bunnie Huang regarding python v other languages [0]"fwiw, Python is a great glue, but a terrible structural material. Do not build skyscrapers out of Python"