I've programmed for a very long time, and I've rather incidentally taught and tutored programmers at many levels of ability over the years including some friend

I've programmed for a very long time, and I've rather incidentally taught and tutored programmers at many levels of ability over the years including some friends that were trying to learn LISP. I see very little benefit in teaching elementary school kids to program in LISP. My daughter took her first programming course in college and used the excellent book (HTDP), see [1], intended for beginners that used Racket as the programming language. By the end of the semester she was able to make a simple graphical game. I thought the course was very good and she liked it and still has a fondness for Racket although I believe that she has only used Java, C++, and Python since that class (she is now a CS major). Learning Racket (which is Scheme and very closely related to LISP) worked out well for my daughter, so why would I say that LISP in elementary school isn't a good choice? Several reasons: • Lisp isn't a popular language, ranking 28th on the TIOBE list of programming languages so there is far less opportunities to make use of programming ability in LISP than in other languages. • Lisp isn't easy. The Common Lisp Standard is well over 1000 pages long. It lists over 1000 functions. Take a look at the basic iteration constructs, the most general is LOOP and has a whole chapter, see [2], in Peter Seibel's excellent Practical Common Lisp, but even the simpler DO construct is no cake walk[3]. • Recursion for elementary students... LOL • Smart people have tried introducing LISP based programming to youngsters already and it didn't seem to take off. See Papert's LOGO language from the 80's. I've actually written some programs in it, but I don't remember where I got to use the language. (Perhaps it ran on the PLATO system?). I agree with a number of his insights[4]. Elementary school children don't understand functions and they really don't even understand basic math. The problem with LISP is that while it has an abstract simplicity that I find appealing and really quite beautiful, it's abstract nature is going to make it difficult for children. Less abstract systems like ALICE or SCRATCH seem a better fit if we insist on teaching kids to code. I personally don't see the need to teach kids to code. Why not teach them math first. Why would programming come before understanding how to divide fractions or how polynomials work or what simple logical operations mean? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Design_Programs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Design_Programs [2] http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/loop-for-black-belts.html http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/loop-for-black-belts.html [3] http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/m_do_do.htm http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/m_do_d... [4] https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxha2hsYWdoZWF8Z3g6NzgyOWYxNWNjMjE5ZjVh https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsd...