Honest interest from someone who doesn't know: While I know this is happening at least some other places in the US (it happened to the one I went to and to at least one a friend attended), is it largely limited to this country, or are other countries seeing similar issues?
My university (Helsinki University of Technology) changed the freshman course from SICP to Java in the beginning of the century. The reason was Nokia, who wanted Java programmers straight from the school.
Nowadays they're using Python.
I'm very disappointed I didn't have a chance to study that course. I read the book last year and did some exercises by my own. I never had so much fun with any CS book than I had with SICP.
Nokia. That company just keeps giving. Some universities in Finland fell into that very same trap a second time and moved towards the holy triad of C#, .Net and Windows Phone. Utter shortsighted idiocy
It is the difference between encouraging plasticity (true creativity, etc.) and indoctrination (control), the latter which is considered must, when cranking out armies of soldiers, clerks and corporate programmers.
Thanks for the input. I just started learning Clojure and it's blowing my mind... I felt sorry for some friends in college that started with Scheme but now I'm realizing I missed something pretty beneficial.
