On 28/08/2015, Mike Meyer
"Imperative language" instead of "pain".
It's no more exact. I'm not disputing whether Python is an imperative
language; I'm rather disputing whether it's good ☺
On 28/08/2015, Mike Meyer
I have to disagree, and for much the same reason that Nicola does: these details matter if you're teaching computer architecture, but not if you are teaching programming. At least, not in an introductory course.
Here I fully agree. If one is teaching computer architecture, assembly is uniquely appropriate. If one is teaching programming, Haskell is non-uniquely appropriate, but I would not consider Python appropiate. Haskell is a better imperative programming language than Python. It has mutable state where needed, in the ST monad. Beautiful is better than ugly. Explicit is better than implicit. Haskell is better than Python.