Back in the '80s, at the University of Buenos Aires the first intro to algorithms course was taught using the Spanish-based TIMBA language. It was a kind of Pas

Back in the '80s, at the University of Buenos Aires the first intro to algorithms course was taught using the Spanish-based TIMBA language. It was a kind of Pascal/ pseudocode language that we used to program an imaginary one-armed robot to perform some tasks on a deck of cards. We would write a program for sorting the cards by number, or pick all cards with the number 2, things like that. I think it was a good idea for those of us not familiar with either computers or the English language. The language didn't have a running implementation that I know of; it was all paper-based. ("Timba" means "gambling" in Argentinian slang -- for some reason writing TIMBA programs always reminded me of the late Rene Lavand, the one-armed Argentinian magician.)