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.
On Sun, 5 Apr 2020, Toby Thain wrote:
Sounds like you've never heard of Lisp.
LISP is a reasonable alternative starter language.
I PREFER BASIC for beginners, because I have met a few that have
difficulty fully understanding parentheses, and BASIC is a trivial
transfer to FORTRAN and a few other languages in that group.
