Programming by Poking: Why MIT Stopped Teaching SICP (2016)

I just finished going through the SICP text (and most of the vid lectures). Upon reading it, I realized how much I and millions of others got robbed of a proper software engineering education.

To me, this reads as an admission that software complexity leads to lower determinacy and lower systemic coherence. That bottom up design is dead, at least with regards to the industry they are preparing people for. I still think that SICP teaches sound thinking, as do compositional agglomerative syncretic approaches, even if you never do write any systems in forth.

Though I can’t quite put my finger on it, I also can’t help feeling like this explanation is a bit of a cop-out. I think if he had stopped at “we’re tired of teaching it” I would have found that more credible.

>"they felt that the SICP curriculum no longer prepared engineers for what engineering is like today."

this is truer now, because people stopped reading or being taught with SICP.

Past related threads:

Why MIT uses Python instead of Scheme for its undergraduate CS program (2009) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18782101 - Dec 2018 (136 comments)

One Reason That MIT Should Reinstate Scheme and 6.001 (2009) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18386223 - Nov 2018 (38 comments)

Why MIT Switched from Scheme to Python (2009) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14167453 - April 2017 (97 comments)

Programming by poking: why MIT stopped teaching SICP - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13105896 - Dec 2016 (9 comments)

Programming by poking: why MIT stopped teaching SICP - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11628080 - May 2016 (232 comments)

SICP is being taught again at MIT - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3482117 - Jan 2012 (37 comments)

SICP is still used at MIT at graduate level. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3235589 - Nov 2011 (3 comments)

Why MIT now uses python instead of scheme for its undergraduate CS program - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=842333 - Sept 2009 (38 comments)

Chiming in on the MIT Scheme to Python Switch - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=622261 - May 2009 (7 comments)

Why Did M.I.T. Switch from Scheme to Python? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=602307 - May 2009 (65 comments)

Why MIT switched from Scheme to Python - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=530605 - March 2009 (128 comments)

MIT replacing Scheme with Python for Intro CS class - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=75401 - Nov 2007 (16 comments)