| It's not about procedural programming -- it's about the size of the language. If you know of a functional language who's entire manual and standard library can fit on 2 or 3 sheets of paper, then fine, use that. But Python certainly isn't that language. Neither is Javascript. Neither is Haskell. Doesn't mean you can't start on it. Heck, one of my very early languages was C++. But that doesn't mean it's beginner-friendly. Remember, I'm not talking about what your first programming class in college or high-school would be. I'm talking about, "can you sit down over a weekend with zero programming knowledge and end up with at least a basic understanding of how the entire language and runtime works?" Scheme... yeah, I guess I can see Scheme being OK. But you're really missing the entire point of what I'm saying. The reason I brought up Excel in the first place was to drive home that how good the system is overall for practical, real-world purposes does not matter. I bring up examples like TI Basic because if you want to teach someone TI Basic, you can hand them just a calculator and then give them one HTML file (https://www.ticalc.org/programming/columns/83plus-bas/cherny...) and that's it. You're done. They'll be able to figure out the rest. TI Basic is a fantastically designed beginner language. Not because it's procedural. Because it introduces a small number of concepts that force the user to be creative and encourage them to organically discover more advanced topics on their own without an internet tutorial. It's fantastic because it's so small that even a beginner can look at any other example program on the web, even if written by an expert, and generally speaking know what it's doing. |