Instead of deciding between Python or Lisp for a programming intro course...What about an intro course that uses *BOTH*? Good idea?

[zipher]

> > Instead of learning only Scheme or only Python for a one semester intro
> > course, what about learning BOTH?  Maybe that could somehow
> > get the benefits of both?
> 
> No.  LISP-like languages are very different beasts, requiring different mind-sets.  It's like going from geometry to arithmetic.
> 
> Or trying to teach OS/2 (which had great abstract ideas) and switching to Linux without covering the architecture and engineering underneath them.

Another point.  You're allowing Church`s Thesis to misinform you.  While, in theory, every programming language could be made into any other, the architecture in which to do so is completely different, so it misleads the programmer.

To fit LISP into a Turing Machine architecture (what most every procedural programming language and most every computer sold is/utilizes) requires a very obscene translation table in the TM.  I'm not even sure that it's been analyzed, because the TM has no concept of a stack.

Any PhD's know of who's actually make a stack on the TM?  Usually the tape itself holds the stack, but with LISP architecture, this isn't the natural fit.

Mark