[thwarted]

It became clear he had no concept of the ordering of statement. He wrote them like math formulas, and didn't understand that they got executed in order.

We eschew languages like BASIC these days, but I wonder how much BASIC, as available on Commodore machines, the Apple II, or even some graphing calculators, helped communicate this concept. I know I didn't have any problem understanding that when moving to languages that don't have line numbers (although, I did have trouble moving from the full-screen interactive editing on the Commodore to editing "files" as "the program" vs files being a "snapshot" of the program), and I've had the same experience with people who couldn't grok statement ordering. BASIC with its line numbers and simple loops with GOTO may continue to be good first programming languages because it helps with these concepts.

[JoeAltmaier]

I wonder too. I'm no help; it never occurred to me that programming was functional. I took to 'imperative programming' like a fish to water, at a very young age (elementary school).