use Perl

• Functional (Score:1)

  by koschei (147)

  I'd say: go for it.

  I've found that many people, including myself, can have trouble grokking functional programming after years of any other sort. If you get Scheme in there before, say, Perl, I would imagine they'd end up a better programmer (being able to grasp all sorts of different languages).

  --
    ---ict / Spoon
  • Re:Functional (Score:1)

    by mary.poppins (3530)

    The functional features in Perl are the best part! map map grep map map grep map!
    
• Good call (Score:1)

  by Wodin (1395)

  Scheme is really optimal for teaching a beginner of any age how to program, simply because you get around the basic stuff quickly and into more advanced things. The PLT group has been doing a LOT of research into making programming accessible to beginners -- you should in particular look at the How to Design Programs book, as well as a couple of papers by Shriram Krishnamurthi that deal with using Scheme as a web language. Links of importance:

  • http://www.htdp.org [htdp.org]
  • http://www.ccs.neu.edu/scheme/pubs/ [neu.edu]
• Go for it, and do it right! (Score:2)

  by jdavidb (1361)

  Sounds like a great idea to me. I wish someone had taught me scheme at 11. I'd say do everything as functional as you can, though; no imperative style. That will be easy enough to learn later.

  --
  J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers
  • Re:Go for it, and do it right! (Score:1)

    by jordan (120)

    I agree about doing it as functional as possible and I plan to.

    I think that strictly speaking, even sequencing operations is procedural, not functional.

    So,
    
(html-meta ...)
(html-table ...)
(html-footer ...)


    Is essentially procedural in nature.

    The functional way to do this, I believe, would be something like:
    
(map html-gen
      '((meta parm1 parm2 parm3)
          (table parm1 parm2 parm3)
          (footer parm1 parm2 parm3)))


    Maybe I
    • Re:Go for it, and do it right! (Score:2)

      by jdavidb (1361)

      I'm not as into Lisp and functional programming as I want to be, so I can't provide expert insight. All I can say is what I wish. :)

      Definitely search out Paul Graham's material on the net and absorb.

      Should I really go to the trouble of eliminating sequencing?

      I am not educated enough to say on that, yet.

      If I'm going to go this route, no setq's either. Just call the outer driver with literal lists.

      I do think avoiding setq's is good.

      I learned scheme followed by Lisp, and the way I was taught mad

      --
      J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers
      • Re:Go for it, and do it right! (Score:1)

        by jordan (120)

        • Definitely search out Paul Graham's material on the net and absorb.

        I'm familiar with Paul Graham, but from what I can tell, he leans heavily toward Common Lisp and is pretty advanced. I prefer stuff like SICP [mit.edu], HtDP [htdp.org], the refreshingly simple TYSiFD [neu.edu] and The Scheme Programming Language [scheme.com]. All online! None of these texts is appropriate for my 11 year old, but I'm using some of their approaches as inspiration.

        • Bah! There are plenty of scheme programmers here (and I'm not talking about folks like me who can't
• RSI (Score:1)

  by mary.poppins (3530)

  Sounds cool.
  
  One word of caution -- make sure your daughter appreciates the dangers of RSI, and takes regular breaks, etc.. A friend of mine did a ton of programming as a child, and after many years of continuous abuse, his wrists failed (in a BIG way) in college. Last time we talked he was still writing in one-inch tall letters.