I absolutely agree with you. I have some doubt though that SICP needs to be a first course.
Embedded, ROMs, low level OS components... is obviously the old paradigm. Most of an OS or VM though I'd say is going to be high level library manipulation. As for writing a library, I think it depends on the library. Most libraries today are highly dependent on other libraries.
Do you need that much FPS? Can anyone really tell much above 30fps? That used to be my baseline for knowing when I could finish tweaking the settings and start playing.
Absolutely. There is a clear difference between 30 and 60 fps when playing computer games.
Anything above 60 is gravy, but getting a game to stay at 60 is what you want, since it tends to be the refresh rate of the screen you're playing on.
A hexagonal screen would not only solve the vertical screen problem but also the 60 degree angle screen.
Scheme was developed from LISP to prove the possibility of constructing a language from the ground up using a Meta-circular evaluator. That was important for SICP because it meant that every student knew how to create a language using arbitrary primitives, a DSL. There is no way in an 1 year introductory Python class the students would be anywhere near ready to implement a Python with different primitives. You can argue that the entire LISP philosophy is the wrong approach to solving complex problems, and I think history has perhaps show that, but arguing it was just stupid is a bit much.
As for going 18 levels deep that probably should be broken out about every 5 levels into smaller simpler functions.
As for arrays:
(array dimensions element0
(array '(2 3) 'a 'b 'c 'd 'e 'f) -> {Array 2 3}
That doesn't seem that hard.
as a functional language, new students must first learn to think along a different paradigm, one opposed to how they had been thinking their whole life, before they can begin to comprehend the basic concepts they're supposed to be learning
Most students can handle Excel, a functional language. I think breaking them of their bad habits is a good thing for an intro course. It puts most of the students on the same level regardless of background. In a week they won't get there, in a year certainly.
Mostly if I were teaching an intro course today I'd probably go with Python. But I don't think it is nearly as clear as you do. Haskell for example (which keeps most of the essence of LISP with giving them more modern concepts) would be a consideration.
The people who designed the SICP curriculum felt it wasn't teaching the right paradigms. SICP was built around a world where a programmer wrote small programs and tied them together. An individual programmer could really understand an entire production program. Today's programming world involves programmers using massive and complex specialized libraries with far more large group projects. SICP/Scheme didn't train people for that sort of environment. They needed to switch from "what data-structure would best accomplish this goal" to "which library would best accomplish this goal" and Scheme encourages much the opposite.
SICP is probably still the best programming concepts book ever written but those concepts are less important than they used to be.
Python doesn't really support functional programming. A good multi-paradigm educational language which also has a great textbook is Oz.
What are you talking about? Interpreted languages let you reuse data structures for performance. What he did was a performance hack. If anything in languages where getting performance is more difficult we'd expect more, more complex and more subtle bugs like the SSL one.
There is no way you are going to have a legal framework where knowingly distributing materials for which you do not have a license is going to be no big deal. There is no way you are going to have a legal framework where judges are going to be the first step in any copyright dispute.
It is not going to happen.
Systems programmers are the high priests of a low cult. -- R.S. Barton
