[ylyn]

> I think fighting the compiler for a likely-correct program in the end is a better alternative than understanding why the program failed with this given input and not with another

In my experience (having TAed a CS1 course) I think it is better for introductory students to be able to figure out what they are doing wrong, rather than having a compiler point it out to them.

In the first class, we want to focus on computational thinking and being able to then express their ideas into programs. So we intentionally use very little of the language (JS in my case), because the language is not the point of the course.

OOP and all these models of abstraction and code organisation come later, once they have a good grasp of the fundamentals.

This particular course I taught is only taken by CS freshmen, so that other commenter's remark (that we should teach a popular language) doesn't apply here.

[kaba0]

> I think it is better for introductory students to be able to figure out what they are doing wrong, rather than having a compiler point it out to them.

That’s implying they will find it out, instead of having a finished project that can randomly crash with a slightly different input.

Also, the compiler is basically just a shorter eval loop.

But I agree with you that OOP should only come later (though using objects is inevitable in most languages)