Daniel Vainsencher wrote on 2003-06-11:

> Ach.. this is painful to even read. Loops and conditionals do *not* have
> to be language primitives, they can be implemented and explained in
> terms of first class functions and polymorphic classes. Which, to the
> extent needed most of the time, are also simpler concepts. This is true,
> despite them being longer words, and not very common.
>
First-class functions are quite simple.  Polymorphic classes - a bit
harder.  Yet doing loops and conditionals with them *is* harder to
comprehend than::

    for i in [1, 2, 3]:
        if i != 2:
            print i

> Java has no virtues as a teaching language, except that it is better in
> all ways than C++.
>
http://www.paulgraham.com/fix.html

> And no, I don't think learning should advance from bad languages to
> worse ones.
>
Well said :)

-- 
Beni Cherniavsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Premature classification is the superclass of all evil.

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