Teaching python (programming) to children

[David Andreas Alderud]

> oh, give him a little slack.  it might be true that the computer science
> department at his university isn't exactly the best one in Sweden (hardly
> his fault), but he has a point there: Ada wasn't just designed once, but
> twice.

True, MSI is not prominent, on the other hand, there is no CS apartment in
Sweden that is worth jack.
In fact, I'd say it's hard to find any university that does anything special
these days, though I'd cut my arm off to be teached by Aho, Ullman, McIlroy,
Rabin etc.
Though in MSI's defence, Ritzau's Java technology is considered state of the
art, 1.4 is largly based on his work I have heard.

> unlike e.g. Scheme, which we all know was discovered, not designed.

Though LISP is neat, since it's so darn easy to implement, I wouldn't
stretch it as far as call it well designed syntax-wise.
Scheme is no different, parathesis mania is hardly good design, ask anyone
what they think of writing 30kLoC+ programs in LISP.
On the other hand, wouldn't call anyone that has not written 30kLoC+
programs a real programmer.

> (and we all know that the van Rossum's don't know anything about
> design ;-)

Non-declarative languages are not following good design patterns, though in
all fairness I love the Python implementation and its fast prototyping
abilities.
Now repeat after me: "Non-declarative is bad!"