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From: gateley@m2.csc.ti.com (John Gateley)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Which language to teach first?
Message-ID: <86646@ti-csl.csc.ti.com>
Date: 6 Aug 89 21:19:44 GMT
References: <8514@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> <14501@bfmny0.UUCP> <44cb7970.f9df@gtephx.UUCP>
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Reply-To: gateley@m2.UUCP (John Gateley)
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In article <44cb7970.f9df@gtephx.UUCP> reesd@gtephx.UUCP (David Rees) writes:
>... It seems
>to me that Scheme (and Lisp..) both would show a slightly distorted view
>of programming languages in general. What I mean is that Scheme does not (in
>my opinion) show a good cross-section of programming languages.
>((((( It also has two many parentheses )))) :)
>			-David

This is not my experience: Scheme (or Lisp) makes it easy to understand
most concepts in programming languages:
  a prolog interpreter can be written in less than one page.
  All the basic stuff needed for Pascal-style languages is there.
  Even the dreaded GOTO can be done(in Scheme w/ call/cc, in Lisp w/ tagbody).
The expressiveness of the language combined with the simple syntax make
it a very good language for learning about techniques used in different
languages.

John
gateley@m2.csc.ti.com