Teaching programming vs. teaching a language

[Adam Turoff]

On Mon, Aug 07, 2006 at 04:25:07PM +0100, Jonathan Bennett wrote:
> So when you're teaching programming, you should use a language that's a
> good tool for teaching, not necessarily one that's good for actual use
> in the real world.

That's a false choice.

Programming is about expressing abstract thoughts.  It's not terribly
important if that abstract thought is Tony Hoare's quicksort, rules for
denying expense reports, or mechanisms for alpha blending.

Some languages are *poor* for teaching.  That doesn't imply that a poor
teaching language is necessarily good for industrial applications.

-- Adam