Where do they tech Python officialy ?

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MIT's freshman survey, EECS 1 is taught in Python and Scheme, soon to be 
just Python.

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On Wed, 25 Jul 2007, Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:

> Omari Norman a écrit :
>> On Mon, Jul 23, 2007 at 10:48:10PM -0700, Paul Rubin wrote:
>>
>>
>>> If you're having trouble with Python because you're new at
>>> programming, I can sympathize--I don't think it's the most
>>> beginner-friendly of languages despite the efforts in that direction
>>> by the designers.
>>
>>
>> Just curious--what language would you recommend as most
>> beginner-friendly?
>
> C ?-)
>
> (sorry, just kidding.)
>
>> My previous programming experience was with BASIC--and I think it is
>> true that BASIC will, in many ways, rot your brain.
>
> So will Java.
>
> I learned programming with Hypertalk (MacIntosh's Hypercard scripting
> language, which more or less gave birth to AppleTalk), then RealBasic
> (Mac's Better VB-like), then VB, then Java, then C, then bits of Pascal,
> then Python, and this is where I started to see the light. But I had
> hard time unlearning all those java-ish anal-retentive stupidities and
> arbitrary overcomplexifications before I really enjoyed Python. Playing
> with Lisp (Common Lisp and Scheme) and Smalltalk helped getting rid of
> mental pollution wrt/ declarative static typing. To be honest, playing
> with Haskell and O'Caml also helped me understanding that static typing
> is not necessarily bad by itself.
>
>> I had used QBasic
>> and, later, a little VBA and some PHP. It took some time to unlearn some
>> bad things (object orientation in VBA seems to be mostly a hack, for
>> example, while PHP seems to be a big hack generally)
>
> Well... this is not exactly a scoop !-)
>
>> but it seems to me
>> that Python helped me learn my first modern programming language.
>>
>>
>>> I think Python is not used in university programs very much.  Look for
>>> one that uses SICP (Scheme) or CTM (Mozart/Oz) or a functional
>>> language like Haskell, in preference to the ones that use Java (the
>>> Cobol of the 1990's).  With some reasonable experience in Scheme or
>>> Mozart or Haskell, plus a Python manual, you'll be well on your way.
>>
>>
>> I had heard of these languages, but learning them is a bit discouraging
>> because (Java excepted) they don't seem to get much practical use.
>
> Before considering practical use (FWIW, Python was pretty far from
> mainstream 7 year ago), you should ask yourself how learning one of
> these languages will affect the way you thing about programming. While
> mostly in the imperative/OO camp, Python stole quite a lot from
> functional languages, and this is obviously a GoodThing(tm).
>
> My 2 cents
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>