[dahjelle]

While I fully agree that GOTO can lead to unmaintainable spaghetti (and is rather more likely to do so than other constructs), I wonder if it is actually more understandable than function calls for someone approaching programming for the very first time? I know I cut my teeth using GOTO before discovering GOSUB in BASIC.

Does anyone know of any research on whether some programming constructs are more easily approachable for beginnings and can serve as a tool to understand further concepts (scope, functions, etc.)?