[Tutor] General Programming Question

[alan.gauld@bt.com]

> I think this misses the point.  Recursion is not a 'looping
> construct,' although it can be used that way.  

Oh I agree, and have no beef about  recursion which is IMHO 
a necessary part of any programming language.

> The dialect of Lisp used in SCIP is Scheme.  

Yes and that's fine too.

>     alan> I just think it tends to take a very singular view of
>     alan> programming.
> However, this is like criticizing a dog for having four legs and not
> walking on only two.  Take a look at some of the peculiarities of
> Python.  

But here is the important point SCIP does not explicitly purport
to be about Scheme per se but rather about programming in general.
In that sense I believe it presents a very narrow view of programming, 
albeit a very pure and mathematically well formed view. But I don't 
think it would, make it easy for the reader to adapt to other more 
commonly seen languages. It is still a good book, and I do think 
many Pythonistas would learn a lot from it but I just don't think it
addresses the basics of programming - I/O is barely touched on for 
example.

> Every language requires you to adopt its paradigm.

Sure and when I program in Python I do it very differently to how 
I do it when I use Lisp(mainly in emacs!) but SCIP purports to be 
about something more than just teahing the Scheme language.  Thus 
once someone has learnt Python picking up SCIP and reading it will 
open up a whole new viewpoint on wehat programming is about. A useful 
read and the lessons translate well back into Python but I'd never 
recommend SCIP as a first book on programming. Now in a college 
context with tutors available etc thats a different story...

Alan G