Really? This is what they're using at MIT? We had some Scheme programming problems for Languages so I downloaded the Scheme interpreter from MIT's Gnu site and was instantly teleported back to cranking out C code on a DECWriter in 1980. Even by 1990, this programming environment would have been considered pretty lame next to the Turbo editors Borland was churning out. By the standards of this century, it's a joke.
I realize that many good programmers prefer command-line-style interfaces. When I'm programming a lot (which doesn't happen much anymore), I can get pretty fast with them myself. However, there's still no excuse for not having good diagnostics at the ready when things go wrong. ("The object 0 is not usable in this context" is NOT a good error message). I was reminded of the original Unix C compiler which had a single error message: "Syntax Error". At least it gave you a line number.
Furthermore, we're talking undergrads, here. Yes, very bright undergrads, but students all the same. They aren't going to know the environment forwards and backwards. They're learning. An environment that gives no assistance may be the trial by fire that a place like MIT is looking for, but that's just another reason I don't recommend doing undergrad work at a blue-chip school. Save that sort of abuse for grad school when you're sufficiently hardened for it.
Well, I'm in grad school now, so I got it to work and got my programs written.
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