I utterly and completely disagree with the notion that teaching someone numbers.sort(...), and that having fun building an iphone app in a language that will be

I utterly and completely disagree with the notion that teaching someone numbers.sort(...), and that having fun building an iphone app in a language that will be obsolete in some number of years is not as valuable as learning the "fundamentals" and the underlying reasons why something works. teaching numbers.sort(...) is saying to someone "heres a tool, and here' how to use it. Some people will want to go on and understand how and why the tool works - and we should recognize those folks and encourage them. this is the classic art / science / engineering conundrum -- they're all important and they all overlap.