I think we should only be recommending MIT Scheme. Everything else has got too much going on and can become distracting, for the purposes of education.
I think we should only be recommending MIT Scheme. Everything else has got too much going on and can become distracting, for the purposes of education.
I don't think it is necessary to avoid Racket since "The language #lang sicp provides you with a version of R5RS (the fifth revision of Scheme) changed slightly in order for programs in SICP to run as is." DrScheme is great for this and probably the easiest way to start.
Everything you can do with Scheme you can also do with Snap! with a visual blocks programming user interface. Functional programming, recursion, higher order functions, closures, continuations, macros, metaprogramming, all described by Brian Harvey's curriculum, the Beauty and Joy of Computing:
https://bjc.berkeley.edu/team/snap/
Snap!Con 2025 - Brian Harvey - ACM Karlstrom Award Address
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDK2PE_pkqQ
Brian calls SICP the actual best computer science course ever invented, which is quite a complement from the guy who wrote the second best computer science course ever invented. ;)
He has a lot of interesting thoughs about AI in education.