“Does that mean they considered Lisp to be low level?”
I started writing a reply to you and realized you bring up a good point which I can’t really answer.
I am pretty sure Sussman maintains that Scheme (and Lisp) are “high level” languages, but it is a somewhat pure implementation of Lambda calculus with a few practical features added into it. And to me, understanding lambda calculus is kind of a bare minimum for understanding the fundamental mathematical theory of computing. So putting it that way, getting rid of Scheme from the computer science curriculum seems to me kind of like getting rid of integral calculus from the engineering curriculum.
Maybe to give Sussman and the MIT staff the benefit of the doubt here, it doesn’t make sense for people going into AI to learn about lambda calculus when statistics is far more important for that field. Maybe they should separate AI and computer science entirely and go back to teaching computer science people about computer science, and teach AI people about statistics? Maybe AI should be considered a field of statistics and not computer science?
Does that mean they considered Lisp to be low level?
Does that mean they considered Lisp to be low level?
I started writing a reply to you and realized you bring up a good point which I can’t really answer.
I am pretty sure Sussman maintains that Scheme (and Lisp) are “high level” languages, but it is a somewhat pure implementation of Lambda calculus with a few practical features added into it. And to me, understanding lambda calculus is kind of a bare minimum for understanding the fundamental mathematical theory of computing. So putting it that way, getting rid of Scheme from the computer science curriculum seems to me kind of like getting rid of integral calculus from the engineering curriculum.
Maybe to give Sussman and the MIT staff the benefit of the doubt here, it doesn’t make sense for people going into AI to learn about lambda calculus when statistics is far more important for that field. Maybe they should separate AI and computer science entirely and go back to teaching computer science people about computer science, and teach AI people about statistics? Maybe AI should be considered a field of statistics and not computer science?