On 2020-04-05 8:40 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: >>> well, close. >>> His BASIC quote is: >>> "It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students >>> that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers >>> they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." >>> Here is one copy of his 1975 paper, "How Do We Tell Truths That Might >>> Hurt": >>> https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/ewd498.html > > On Sun, 5 Apr 2020, geneb wrote: >> That doesn't explain the millions of kids that got their start in >> BASIC and grew up to learn skills that could wipe the floor with him... > > I still believe that the best FIRST exposure to computer programming > should be BASIC. VERY FIRST program should have instant gratification, > without having had to already learn underlying structures, variable > types, how to run a compiler, etc. After creating first program, and a > few more, in a very short time, it would then be sensible to evaluate > what kind of programming is most interesting, and switch to the most > appropriate language. Having already created a few token programs, it > is then less onerous to learn compilers, data types, system overhead, > "ENVIRONMENT DIVISION", etc. > > > Q: If Bill Gates hadn't written a BASIC interpreter, where would we be now? > >
Sounds like you've never heard of Lisp.
