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

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, 13 May 2015 08:00 am, zipher wrote:

> Everyone gets it wrong and now we have a plethora of languages which all
> do the same thing, without really knowing what they want as an overarching
> design or purpose.


Why must a language be designed with some "overarching design or purpose"?

Why can't a language be designed with a *practical and concrete* need in
mind? As far as I know, only one language designed from theoretical first
principles has had any measure of mainstream success, Lisp, and that was
probably because there weren't that many decent alternatives at the time.


"I want to do numerical calculations" lead to Fortran.

"I want to control telescopes" lead to Forth.

"I want to teach beginners programming" lead to BASIC.

"I want to teach beginners good programming" lead to Pascal.

"I want to generate webpages on the fly" lead to PHP.

"I want to write interactive fiction and text-based games" lead to Inform.

And so forth.




-- 
Steven