I believe Perl to be a very excellent choice as a first programming language in school!

I know it's very "unrestricted" and "there's more than one way to do it", but I just can't help feeling that "strict and discipline" is not the right thing when it comes to learning. We are all different in the way we learn. Some learn fast when reading, others when listening and so on.

The human mind is not strict and certainly not disciplined (at least mine isn't, can't speak for anyone else) so what would be better than Perl?

Perl is fine with "I do it this way and you can do it that or this or those ways". As humans we all look alike, but we all provide the same basic functionalities.

Anyway, I agree that all must have a sound foundation to stand on (knowing what a $var is or a @array and what IF..ELSE does etc.) but this is "common programming skills" that holds true in all programming languages.

Since Perl is such a "open-minded" language, it will be forgiving with students who are new to this as well (or it's the hard way right from the start. <grin>)

If I would compare Pascal to Perl (don't start a flame war over this), I'd say that when I coded Pascal, I could code no program that I had any use of and it took a long time from concept to finished program (if I ever got that far). With Perl, I can think up virtually anything I want to code, and in an hour or so, I have a first draft finished that actually do something.

To sum it up:
Pascal is too "disciplined". Perl is "loose enough".