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

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 4:42 PM, Rustom Mody <rustompmody at gmail.com> wrote:
> And related to that (and one reason a pure functional language is good for
> pedagogy): NO PRINT statement
> It may seem trivial but beginning students have a real hard writing clean
> structured code.  Tabooing prints helps get there faster
> And working in the interpreter makes a print-taboo a viable option

I firmly disagree. Interactive work is well and good, but print (or
equivalent - console.log, log.info, werror, etc etc) is extremely
useful for learning about a larger application. You can play with
things at the terminal, but how can you find out exactly what happens
when you click this button? Ensuring that your application can be
imported, executed, and manipulated interactively, all without
breaking its primary purpose, is a LOT of extra work, and not
something I'd recommend to beginners. So learn about print, learn
about how to get info out of a running program. You'll be the better
programmer for it.

ChrisA