In cs61a, it really takes one or two lectures to teach Scheme - that's the beauty of it, there is not much syntax to learn. Like almost every other CS class at Berkeley, it's not a language course; it's a computer science course.
A major part of the class was writing a Scheme interpreter in Scheme, which I imagine will not be possible in the new 61a (writing a Python interpreter in Python, that is). Considering how utterly jacked up Python's syntax is, compared to Scheme, I can't wait to see how they manage to pull this one off.
Really, if any Berkeley CS student can't learn Python on their own, their job prospects should be nil anyway.
A major part of the class was writing a Scheme interpreter in Scheme, which I imagine will not be possible in the new 61a (writing a Python interpreter in Python, that is). Considering how utterly jacked up Python's syntax is, compared to Scheme, I can't wait to see how they manage to pull this one off.
Really, if any Berkeley CS student can't learn Python on their own, their job prospects should be nil anyway.