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Comment by kaesar14 | Hacker News Reader

Funny to see anything Racket related rocket up to the front page of HN. My alma mater (Northeastern) is heavily involved in its development and the infamous intro CS class (Fundamentals of Computer Science 1 / Fundies 1) is taught in it. I only appreciated its beauty after I learned how to code deeper into the program. Horrible experience for anyone coming into it with no CS background.

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Really? I'm a self taught programmer, and one the best MOOC courses I took was How to Code taught by Gregor Kiczales.[^1] I believe it's based on HtDP. I thought it was great experience. Although, I did no know a little Python coming in.

[1]: https://www.edx.org/course/how-to-code-simple-data

I was one of the first people to take that course when it first launched in person at UBC! There were a dozen people in that first year pilot program.

It gets so much hate for not being a “traditional” Intro to CS course. And yet, learning about recursion so quickly and getting such a strong foundation with it is invaluable for figuring out new ways to solve problems. It’s one of the only courses that I personally think taught me something so fundamental that I still use all the time.

Gregor is also a gem of a human. I’m incredibly grateful I’ve been able to get to know and learn from him while at UBC.

I took Fundies 1 at NEU last year, but I came in with a good amount of programming experience. I appreciated it because it forced me to think in a new programming paradigm (functional) but for a lot of my classmates who were beginners it was tough because of the much more puzzle-like nature of the problems. I also didn't think it was very fair to these students for the curriculum to immediately abandon Racket after the first semester and go right into Java for the second. The Fundies classes can at times be very discouraging because of the intensity.

What makes it horrible? I never took a course in Racket or any other language. But the documentation and HTDP look very beginner-friendly.

I just think functional based program is a bit harder to reason about for newbies. Programming did not click for me until the third class in the track where we learned object oriented design. Pretty common experience in the program as well, scared away a lot of people who took fundies 1 to explore the major or to minor in CS.

I took the class as a freshman, taught by Matthias, and then was a grader/lab helper the following year. (Oh gosh, this is all 15 years ago now)

In my observation, it was those with previous java/c++ experience that couldn't let that go who struggled the most. Total newbies were a blank slate and more likely to 'get it', assuming they have the abilities needed to succeed in a CS program.

I would say that was my experience as well. It actually took me a while to understand why I would use classes and objects.

Could just be different strokes for different folks. I thought OOD in java taught by Lerner was way better (Card game project opener was wonderful) and just made more intuitive sense. I didn't honestly get functional programming until circling back to Racket in PL.

I would also say Matthias is a legend and my instructors were nowhere near that level.

+1 as someone who took and TAed it for multiple years at UBC. The people who came in with preconceived ideas of CS were the ones that struggled the most.

We had a bypass exam, which was more or less the final for the course. If you passed it, you got the credit. I don’t think a single person passed it while I was there.

Matthias Felleisen co-wrote a book on Java, elegant uses of class-based inheritance, and elegant design patterns.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262561150/a-little-java-a-few-p...

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