My quick take is that the authors of the linked essay have a circumscribed and very industry-focused view of what an introductory CS course should teach and what kind of things a student should be expected to learn. Their primary goal seems to be preparing students for a follow-up Java course (of the early 2000s style of Java), but without dropping all of the incidental complexity of Java/C++ on the students right away. To that effect they have pared down most of the “computer science” content of a SICP type course, and focused heavily on the computer programming process, analogous to the way middle school English classes teach about writing.
(Disclaimer: I have not directly evaluated their curriculum/textbook.)
This differs markedly from my own opinion about the proper goals of a ‘computer science’ course at the undergraduate level, which is to teach timeless principles and flexible thinking without bending to fashion (especially fashion which is now a decade out of date), and to prepare students for follow-up computer science courses such as data structures / algorithms, theory of computation, programming languages, or in a more applied direction databases, networking, graphics, operating systems, numerical analysis, machine learning, and so on. A lot of these follow-up courses will be substantially mathematical and will rely heavily on analytical skills developed in in introductory CS course and in mathematics courses (not just on programming skills per se).
But if updated for 2018 the authors’ curriculum would be appropriate as a course titled “introduction to programming” or the like. I agree it sounds like an improvement vs. first courses that start students out on C++ or Java (their main comparison in the linked paper).
The authors are Matthias Felleisen and other core PLT Scheme/Racket guys. They're hardcore members of the academic Scheme community, absolutely not very industry-focussed guys, and the real industry-friendly contingent apparently doesn't much like HtDP either: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/Thoughts/colleagues.htm... . HtDP is often described as a bit of a grey slog (I've dipped into it but haven't done it or read it cover to cover yet), but the authors absolutely haven't given up on the ideal of teaching timeless principles and modes of thinking, they're just more realistic about how the material has to be paced and prepared to get a normal body of first-year undergraduates through it successfully.
(Disclaimer: I have not directly evaluated their curriculum/textbook.)
This differs markedly from my own opinion about the proper goals of a ‘computer science’ course at the undergraduate level, which is to teach timeless principles and flexible thinking without bending to fashion (especially fashion which is now a decade out of date), and to prepare students for follow-up computer science courses such as data structures / algorithms, theory of computation, programming languages, or in a more applied direction databases, networking, graphics, operating systems, numerical analysis, machine learning, and so on. A lot of these follow-up courses will be substantially mathematical and will rely heavily on analytical skills developed in in introductory CS course and in mathematics courses (not just on programming skills per se).
But if updated for 2018 the authors’ curriculum would be appropriate as a course titled “introduction to programming” or the like. I agree it sounds like an improvement vs. first courses that start students out on C++ or Java (their main comparison in the linked paper).
YMMV.