[OFFTOPIC, but possibly amusing] [was: peasant revolt against DrScheme!]

[Brent Fulgham <brent.fulgham@xpsystems.com>]

> Okay, in all honesty, I suspect that *most* people who teach 
> introductory programming do a bad job. They teach syntax and
> little else. It is certainly true in Rice's C/C++ programming
> course.

Case In Point:

1* -- Boring..., November 19, 2000 
Reviewer from USA
>
> There are many things wrong with this book, but perhaps the
> worst is its shameless lying when the authors promise you
> profound knowledge of computer science and end up delivering a 
> cheezy promotion of Scheme. They only concentrate on aspects of
> programming as it involves Scheme and don't make any effort to 
> teach computer science as an art or as a science. They don't 
> teach anything that's applicable in general, or will give you 
> better understanding of the issues involved in writing good 
> software. All they do is present trivial topics such as basic
> data structures and programming example, and it's all using 
> Scheme. I ended up learning Scheme and nothing else. 
>
> There are plenty of other good books which cover the art of 
> programming so generally that you'll find information useful
> in any programming project. For example: Cormen, Leiserson,
> Rivest "Introduction to algorithms", Knuth "The art of computer
> programming" (3 volumes) ... these are all highly regarded books.
> All I hear about SICP from students and professors alike is that
> they wish the book ceased to exist.
>
> Don't listen to the others on this page...the book won't teach
> you to be a better programmer, and it won't teach you how to
> understand programs. It'll simply waste a lot of your time.

So, perhaps some Scheme-teachers just teach syntax as well?  ;-)

> If you were to put a gun to my head and force me to teach a C/C++
> course (or Java), I could do a much better job than they do. I would
> translate HtDP into this {->*&!--}; language and teach these kids some
> good stuff. But do I want to? No way!  I think I'd rather wait for you
> to pull the trigger :-)
> 

Don't loose all hope.  Instead, enjoy another funny review:

1* -- "Junk"
Review from USA
> From what I've read, I get the impression this book was written in
> a rush, and with the purpose of cramming tons of nonsense and filler
> in just to have an excuse to present Scheme (a pathetic language). The
> authors claim to present a view of programming that's widely applicable,
> and state that top-down (i.e. procedural) programming is by far not the
> best way to think about programs abstractly. Well, they don't stick to
> their promise. They present a biased, one sided promotion of scheme as
> the best language out there. No attempt is made to make comparisons 
> between functional languages like scheme and normal languages like C.
> The end result, you come out knowing scheme and a few boring applications
> of it, but can't apply any of it to real programming tasks. This proves
> this book is just a fancy concotion of some egghead professor who has
> no idea what happens in the real world. I found many explanations to be
> incoherent and contradictory. The whole approach is divorced from the
> computing practice. This is no 21 day book, in fact, you can spend 21
> months on it and still not learn a thing, because there's nothing but
> worthless garbage here. 

This is priceless!  I love the logic -- "... This proves the book is just
a fancy concotion[sic] of some egghed professor."

-Brent