[commentzorro]

Should have started him with Haskell so he would learned monads and functors right from the start with no mutable object baggage to trip him up. Maybe a few weeks of child level category theory first.

[kowdermeister]

I really hope you are kidding, because this was the funniest comment I've read today and I already scanned Reddit :)

[smnplk]

I would sit him through a few Leslie Lamport lectures on category theory, maybe just 10 hours worth of material. I think this would be enough to get him stared with Haskell.

[detaro]

Any references for "child-level category theory"? I suspect that would be helpful for many non-children as well.

[rottingtree]

How about this: https://www.amazon.com/Conceptual-Mathematics-First-Introduc...

[anondon]

Why Haskell, the kid should have started with Lisp.

[flexie]

Why lisp? Kid should have learned assembly, or better yet; pure math. Now he is corrupted already.

[leke]

Why assembly? Give the kid a magnetic needle and he'll soon learn to flip his own bits.

[notfoss]

Give the kid Emacs, the language doesn't matter :P

[smnplk]

Why lisp ? Because you want to give him the best possible tool for computing and ruin his (possible) future career, where he will be forced to work with people that like java and/or javascript.

(Downvote me all you want... :P )

[kazinator]

This "kid" here started Lisp at around 29. Some 18 years after starting programming, and well into a C++-based career. You can come around late.

[neovive]

I would need to write up a bunch of new analogies for Haskell. I only recently started to make sense of functional Javascript and it's changed the way I think about code. Haskell is definitely on my own list of things to learn.