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<p>Thanks for sharing. From that short article to me it seems that
the SICP curriculum was taking a similar approach to programming
as the waterfall model, and programming by poking is an approach
similar to the Agile methodology. Agile is all about prototyping,
implementing a minimum amount of code to get the desired result,
and iterating (it's much more, of course, according to the Agile
manifesto, but in this comparison I am only concerned with
similarities).</p>
<p>Greg<br>
</p>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 05/05/2016 14:51, Lloyd R. Prentice
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:9F954143-F33E-4E21-913F-552420E36CEC@writersglen.com"
type="cite">
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<div>Pertinent to the discussion:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<h2 class="post-title" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0.3em 0px;
border-width: 0px 0px 5px; border-bottom-style: solid;
border-bottom-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 1.4em;
vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><font
size="3"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255,
0);">PROGRAMMING BY POKING: WHY MIT STOPPED TEACHING SICP</span></font></h2>
</div>
<div> <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.posteriorscience.net/?p=206">http://www.posteriorscience.net/?p=206</a></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Best wishes,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>LRP<br>
<br>
<div>Sent from my iPad</div>
</div>
<div><br>
On May 5, 2016, at 6:07 AM, Vlad Dumitrescu <<a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:vladdu55@gmail.com"><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:vladdu55@gmail.com">vladdu55@gmail.com</a></a>>
wrote:<br>
<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>
<div dir="ltr"><br>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 1:19 AM,
Richard A. O'Keefe <span dir="ltr"><<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:ok@cs.otago.ac.nz" target="_blank"><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:ok@cs.otago.ac.nz">ok@cs.otago.ac.nz</a></a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px
0px
0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><span
class=""><br>
On 4/05/16 6:49 PM, Vlad Dumitrescu wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px
0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><br>
I don't disagree with you, it's just that for
projects larger than toys, I don't know how to
browse the history for something that i don't know
what it looks like and that might or might not be
there. Taking erlide as an example, there are 6000
files in 7000 commits in the main branch, going
back 13-14 years and if i would have saved all
experiments I'd probably have a tree of at least 5
times that much. I am certain that I wouldn't be
able to find anything faster than I would write it
again from scratch.<br>
</blockquote>
</span><br>
With 6000 files of totally unfamiliar code, there's no
way I could find<br>
anything without a map and ground approach radar.
(find . -type -f -print |<br>
wc actually counts 2774 files; it did report 6186
before I got rid of all<br>
the '._*' junk files you get on a Mac.) OK, so 1344
Java files, 38 Erlang<br>
files, 2 Ruby files, 1 XSLT file, and 50-odd Xtend
files (which I can't read<br>
yet), even hamcrest (oh don't get me started on
hamcrest)...<br>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Yeah, I think I forgot to filter out the binary
files. Anyway, the point was that at that size, having
a multitude of alternative histories, many of which
might not be relevant at all any more, it gets
exponentially harder to be able to find anything in
there. </div>
<div> </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px
0px
0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">With
the ._* junk removed, I measure 33.6 MB. This one
Eclipse plugin<br>
is bigger than the whole Quintus Prolog system,
including manuals.<br>
<br>
Not only that, it's more than half the size of Pharo,
which is a complete<br>
Smalltalk system including the refactoring browser.
There seems to be<br>
something about Java that forces systems to grow
exceeding large.</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Yes, and most of the important stuff (the Erlang
implementation of the kernel functionality) is located
in another repository. I also had to include some
third party libraries as sources, in order to not
depend on external stuff whose availability was
unreliable.</div>
<div> </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px
0px
0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><span
class="">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px
0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">We
would need an index of the important experiments,
with a reason why they didn't were chosen for
implementation and maybe a brief description of
the design, and a reference to the commits. This
requires a lot of discipline to maintain
(especially when a team is working on the project,
with each person doing its own experiments).<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
</span>
Such a thing would, however, be extraordinarily useful
for someone in my<br>
position, with NO idea of where to look for ANYTHING,
and a dead link to<br>
documentation. The README.md file contains this line:<br>
<br>
Documentation may be found at<br>
[the project site](<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://erlide.org/erlide.html"
rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://erlide.org/erlide.html</a>).<br>
<br>
That site isn't supposed to expire until next year,
but right now it's not<br>
accessible. So yeah, I'd find lots of history very
helpful. And lots of</blockquote>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px
0px
0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">advice
for the traveller.<br>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<div>Thanks for pointing that out, I fixed the link. I
will try to keep such a high-level history from now
on, I'm sure there will be a lot to learn for myself
too.</div>
<div> <br>
</div>
</div>
<div>best regards,<br>
</div>
<div>Vlad</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
<br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite">
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