[smnplk]

>> Maybe Pyret isn't for beginners, and it's intended to teach people who already have some basic knowledge more advanced concepts like functional programming <<

I often hear people say that functional programming is advanced concept. I think students are able to learn functional programming as their first model of computation, before they are even exposed to Turing machine computing. It's not like you have to first learn C, then some java and only after you become familiar with OO, you have enough knowledge to grasp functions as first class citizens.

[skrishnamurthi]

Many of our functional programming students are ~12 years old, and have not yet been exposed to any other textual programming language. They handle it just fine. They don't write lambdas, but they do actually use functions-as-values (without fully realizing it). It's really not a big deal, except for people who were taught otherwise and don't realize the fog that permeates their thinking!