2018-02-23 18:58:03 +00:00
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---
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created_at: '2017-04-21T17:22:46.000Z'
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title: Why MIT Switched from Scheme to Python (2009)
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url: https://www.wisdomandwonder.com/link/2110/why-mit-switched-from-scheme-to-python
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author: behnamoh
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points: 205
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story_text:
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comment_text:
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num_comments: 97
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story_id:
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story_title:
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parent_id:
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created_at_i: 1492795366
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_tags:
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- story
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- author_behnamoh
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- story_14167453
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objectID: '14167453'
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2018-06-08 12:05:27 +00:00
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year: 2009
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2018-02-23 18:58:03 +00:00
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---
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2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
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> Costanza asked Sussman why MIT had switched away from Scheme for their
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> introductory programming course, 6.001. This was a gem. He said that
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> the reason that happened was because engineering in 1980 was not what
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> it was in the mid-90s or in 2000. In 1980, good programmers spent a
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> lot of time thinking, and then produced spare code that they thought
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> should work. Code ran close to the metal, even Scheme — it was
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> understandable all the way down. Like a resistor, where you could read
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> the bands and know the power rating and the tolerance and the
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> resistance and V=IR and that’s all there was to know. 6.001 had been
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> conceived to teach engineers how to take small parts that they
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> understood entirely and use simple techniques to compose them into
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> larger things that do what you want.
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>
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> But programming now isn’t so much like that, said Sussman. Nowadays
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> you muck around with incomprehensible or nonexistent man pages for
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> software you don’t know who wrote. You have to do basic science on
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> your libraries to see how they work, trying out different inputs and
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> seeing how the code reacts. This is a fundamentally different job, and
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> it needed a different course.
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>
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> So the good thing about the new 6.001 was that it was robot-centered —
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> you had to program a little robot to move around. And robots are not
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> like resistors, behaving according to ideal functions. Wheels slip,
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> the environment changes, etc — you have to build in robustness to the
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> system, in a different way than the one SICP discusses.
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>
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> And why Python, then? Well, said Sussman, it probably just had a
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> library already implemented for the robotics interface, that was all.
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