To be fair, this course should be put in perspective with a range of other compulsory 100-level and 200-level courses at CMU. This is flagged - subtly, to be sure - occasionally within the blog post (language like "for this kind of programming").
Bob and his cronies aren't even _close_ to "controlling the entire CMU curriculuum" and I doubt that they would try to eliminate the study of architecture, other languages, etc. - they are ideologues, not morons. And when you look at the summary of the actual course in question there's an awful lot of very reasonable middle-of-the-road content that you would likely want to expose a well-rounded CS student to.
They spend a lot of time on lectures with titles like "recursion" and less time on "worshipping the graven idol of SML". :-)
Still, I too am worried that such a partisan course is placed so centrally in the sequence. The PL researchers at CMU have shown form at various times in aggressively pushing their point of view in grad core courses and ugrad compulsory courses.
Bob and his cronies aren't even _close_ to "controlling the entire CMU curriculuum" and I doubt that they would try to eliminate the study of architecture, other languages, etc. - they are ideologues, not morons. And when you look at the summary of the actual course in question there's an awful lot of very reasonable middle-of-the-road content that you would likely want to expose a well-rounded CS student to.
They spend a lot of time on lectures with titles like "recursion" and less time on "worshipping the graven idol of SML". :-)
Still, I too am worried that such a partisan course is placed so centrally in the sequence. The PL researchers at CMU have shown form at various times in aggressively pushing their point of view in grad core courses and ugrad compulsory courses.