The problem with teaching Perl as a first language is that you never know how much easier it is in Perl than in most other languages. Make them pay their dues first: teach them C++. {grin}

In all seriousness, I'd still recommend Smalltalk as a first language, if you can find a good set of tutorials that match the implementation you've downloaded (or bought). Smalltalk's advantage is that the syntax fits on the back of a business card (literally!), permits object-oriented programming for everything (in fact, forces it!), provides incredible introspection, and gives very easy access to graphical widgets in the first few hours.

For implementations, I'd start with Squeak, which has the advantage of being open source and being maintained by the people that originally came up with Smalltalk some 30 years ago. VisualWorks also has a non-commercial personal-use version that seems decent and cross-platform.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

In reply to RE: Perl as a first language by merlyn
in thread Perl as a first language by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.