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Ask HN: Have you tried teaching coding by starting with a functional language?
- mlejva 7y agoIf so, what were the results? How did people react when you showed them non-functional languages later?
- cjbprime 7y agoFWIW this was common in British universities in the early 2000s -- the intro CS courses would be taught in a functional language like SML or OCaml. I think the professors liked that you don't end up with this situation where half the class already learned C and is bored, and half didn't and are going to need to spend a few months understanding what a pointer is. Everyone's equally unfamiliar with SML. I think they've all switched to Python or Java now, though.
- mlejva 7y agoI was thinking it would be an interesting experiment to have two groups of complete beginners. Teach one group with “functional language first” approach and the other one with “non functional language first” approach.