🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Aug19.160326.27474@uklirb.informatik.uni-kl.de> eppler@bordeaux.informatik.uni-kl.de (Reinhard Eppler) writes:

    o most of the concepts needed (at least I need) are present in LISP
    o we need another syntax for LISP
    o list comprehension, pattern matching, soft typing (and ...?) 
      should be added to LISP
    o a pure functional language might be too difficult to use
      (if we had started with pure functional languages, someone would have
      invented global variables to keep the number of parameters small.)
      -> we need multiparadigm languages, e.g. assignments for some cases 
    o by now functional languages are too slow; we need better optimization
      techniques. This also holds for 'pure' OOP.
    o Haskell probably has too much concepts (this is the case with LISP, too)

Why don't you use ML? 

I do not want to start a Haskell vs. ML debate here but I hope that
everybody will agree that ML is much more mature. Sure it does not
contain some concepts like type classes which are worthwhile to
explore but particulary for teaching this may be an advantage. 

A survey which was recently posted here shows that there is a large
number of places where ML is used as an introductory programming
language.  From what I have seen here in Edinburgh it seems to be well
suited for this.

To come back to the original question: I believe that people should
learn C (having hacked in it for a while myself) but not as a first
language. It is bad for your style as is playing an instrument the
wrong way in the beginning. It is hard to get away from bad habbits
you have aquired in the beginning although not impossible.

T.
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Thorsten Altenkirch		alti@dcs.ed.ac.uk
LFCS, Edinburgh
Scotland