teaching programming to kids - baby duck syndrome (why everybody thinks that everybody else needs to learn it their way)

This is actually a very interesting point. There are a few languages (METAFONT comes to mind) which are sufficiently declarative that this isn't true, or at least isn't entirely true. I suspect that there is a tendency - doubtless stronger in some people than others - to think declaratively. This is reinforced by the way many languages use syntax for assignment that looks more like a declaration of fact than a statement of action to be taken; interpreted declaratively, it makes sense to think that order doesn't matter. Pascal kinda-sorta tries to deal with this by using := rather than =. APL gets it much righter with its left-arrow operator. From a psychological point of view, it's a pity more languages don't use <- for assignment, or put the value first and use ->, or some such. (This is one respect in which Lisp wins, with setq - of course, the mere existence of setq throws functional-programming wonks into a tizzy.) Indeed. I count myself lucky I had no clearly-defined first system; when I first started actually using computers, I learnt two or three, fairly drastically different, at more or less the same time. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B