🚀 go-pugleaf

This subject of beginner's computer languages seems to crop up
every few years, yet surprisingly the arguments remain pretty
much constant - you'd think there'd be progress ...

From my own experience, which begins with WatFor and PL/1, I
would recommend anything but those two, and maybe add in the APL
variants as mindset dead-ends - not to imply that these, in the
hands of a trained professional, cannot be used in amazing ways,
just that the neophyte will spend the bulk of their time
learning alien codewords and symbols, awkward, unnatural and
mindlessly strict grammar, and a host of other irrelevent
details.  To begin programming, you want to start by writing
programs, not cyphers.

In teaching others, I've always found the criteria for choosing
the language to be more social than technical.  Despite whatever
reasons I might have for one over the other, it generally boils
down to knowing what languages their friends and collegues use,
what source examples & textbooks are available and what programs
they expect to write.  My father-in-law, now over 70, is
learning quickBasic, my good friend Udo, likewise near 70, has
other composer friends who can help him in C.  Whatever I might
say, these two are not about to buck their hinterland.

For children, however, maybe it's my age, maybe it's just my
general disposition, but I find them more willing to try my
advice on a first language.  Here is where my hypothesis of
avoiding the noise seems to work; kids (9 to 19) with no
particular math/science bent, pick up on declarative languages
much faster than procedurals.  Using Prolog, where there is only
one grammatical construct and few keywords, or Logo, which is
similarly terse, they can have their first program up and
running within minutes, with no 'railroad diagrams' or keyword
lists to memorize.  I don't know if it's just the particular
kids I've dealt with, but I find they also grasp programming by
goal-reduction much faster than they do the iterative,
sequence-specification approach.  I'm not saying that I'd never
teach them C, it's just that, as their tutor, I want to get them
hooked on the box before they even glimpse its terrors.
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