Instead of deciding between Python or Lisp for a programming intro course...What about an intro course that uses *BOTH*? Good idea?

[Chris Angelico]

On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 3:15 AM, Stefan Ram <ram at zedat.fu-berlin.de> wrote:
> Rob Gaddi <rgaddi at technologyhighland.invalid> writes:
>>Is that a true array or a linked list?  "It's a high level language,
>>that's just an implementation detail." Yes, but it's an implementation
>>detail that determines whether even the simple act of looking up element
>>n is O(1) or O(n).
>
>   The complexity is given in the documentation of high-level languages.
>
>   For example, from the documentation of the Java standard library:
>
>       »This implementation provides constant-time performance
>       for the basic operations (get and put),« (java.util.HashMap)
>
>   C++:
>
>       Section 23.2.1 specifies the complexity, such as »compile time«,
>       »constant«, »linear« for container operations.
>
>   But the abstraction mechanisms (templates, polymorphism)
>   often allow one to change the implementation quite easily.

It isn't always given in the docs. Sometimes it's not even a promise;
back when MicroPython was debating the implementation of Unicode
strings, there was a lengthy discussion on python-dev about whether
it's okay for string subscripting to be O(n) instead of O(1), and the
final decision was that yes, that's an implementation detail. (UTF-8
internal string representation, so iterating over a string would still
yield characters in overall O(n), but iterating up to the string's
length and subscripting for each character would become O(n*n) on
uPy.)

ChrisA