·········@titan.ksc.nasa.gov (mcroberts) writes:
I'd like to teach my eight year old son some programming.
... My second choice is lisp.
I replied:
I would recommend using Scheme ...
······@frlv.bull.fr (Alain.Fajner) then responded:
Don't you think that it would be a little bit difficult for an
eight year old to learn LISP programming ???
I think that it would be more likely to begin by not teaching
him a functional programming language...
What about Pascal ??
Ooooof! Sorry, that just knocked the wind out of me...what is this,
comp.lang.pascal? 1972? Twilight zone? I need air :-).
--
Brent Benson ···@cs.unh.edu
Department of Computer Science 603-862-3786
University of New Hampshire
Durham, NH 03824
[Pascal and scheme suggested.]
Whatever happened to Logo?
Actually, I'd suggest you _not_ teach 7- or 8-year old kids to program,
and teach them reading, writing, mountain hiking and football instead
(alternatives are OK if you get my idea) , and let them play with other
kids as much as possible.
Pascal is more difficult than scheme. The fact that scheme is more
powerful in certain repects does not make it more difficult to learn.
Scheme is better than Pascal as a pedagogical tool because you get instant
feedback, and because there's a lot of bad programming practices that
scheme doesn't let you learn.
But LOGO might be more ideal because the feedback is much more lucid.
--
Rolf Lindgren | "The opinions expressed above are
616 Bjerke Studentheim | not necessarily those of anyone"
N-0589 OSLO 5 | ··············@usit.uio.no