Learning all of a Python or Ruby or Javascript, and knowing how to use it well and in a structured way, would cover a good, say, 60% of various concepts of impe

Learning all of a Python or Ruby or Javascript, and knowing how to use it well and in a structured way, would cover a good, say, 60% of various concepts of imperative, functional and object-oriented programming Totally agree, and my issue is more that these languages are too linked to the environment in which they run - step 1 of learning to code shouldn't be wrestling with install files and stacks and tools (http://tryruby.org http://tryruby.org is a great exception). Secondly, a lot of the way they are taught does not actually teach you the abstractions but expects you to parrot code and infer the abstractions as you go along. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to bring back BASIC as a platform for today, though it'd be fun to see it happen.