Which kid's beginners programming - Python or Forth?

[Edvard Majakari]

gatti at dsdata.it writes:

> Ivan Van Laningham wrote:
> [...]
>>
>> Seriously, PostScript is a lot more fun to learn than Forth, and more
>> directly useful.  Since the rewards are so immediate, a kid's attention
>> could be gained and kept pretty easily.
>
> PostScript is easy, but I'm afraid some technical details could get in
> the way of enjoyable exploration, e.g. font types or scaling.
> PostScript is also a single purpose language: it can print static
> graphics and with a slightly more complex setup it can display static
> graphics on the screen, period. No interactivity, no files, no network,
> no general computation or data structures.

PostScript is _not_ limited to static stuff, and it _does_ support
interactivity. See eg. 

http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~wagner/index_files/aaa.html

Of course, this is just academic fun(?). PostScript is mostly used for
printers, and as for yet, quite few papers support animated graphics :->

And yes, I also encourage to try Python.

> List comprehensions, however, *are* the basic control flow; loops are
> much more verbose and they should be used only when necessary.

Hm. My experience is that people find loops easier to understand - varies
somewhat, though. For some, 'more verbose' is 'more easy to understand'.

-- 
# Edvard Majakari		Software Engineer
# PGP PUBLIC KEY available    	Soli Deo Gloria!

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