Sure, Lisp, ML, whatever. The point is not that Haskell is the absolute best language for beginners, but that Python is not lightyears ahead of it as regards cl

Sure, Lisp, ML, whatever. The point is not that Haskell is the absolute best language for beginners, but that Python is not lightyears ahead of it as regards clarity and readability. I think you _can_ do basic programming without typeclasses, and even then, simple typeclasses are not hard to explain. In fact, I think Num might be easier to explain to a 5 year old than the distinction between Int and Float is.