On: Why did we ever think a student's first programmin...

[jefftk]

On the other hand my team recent was taking about what languages we started with, and about 1/4 of us started with Basic. Seemed to recover ok!

[peoplefromibiza → jefftk]

I've started with BASIC as well, in the 80s, on a C64

Dijkstra was right: I've wasted a lot of time unlearning BASIC to re-learn, if I wasn't exposed to BASIC at all I could have learnt from scratch a proper modern programming language/paradigm

[mypalmike → peoplefromibiza]

It helps to have a good teacher. My years of Atari 8 bit BASIC seemed more help than hindrance when a good high school computer teacher then taught me Pascal.

[nesarkvechnep → jefftk]

That’s your own opinion.

[jefftk → nesarkvechnep]

I'm not claiming Basic is the best language, or that it doesn't matter what language you start with, but "practically impossible" is clearly way off.

[alanbernstein → jefftk]

I think you need to know how many students were introduced to programming with a course in Basic, and gave up programming, to make that claim. Not that I necessarily agree with the quote.