[Yunk]

SML is great, but based on the UW paradigms course, I'd say it gets a lot of backlash from students wanting something common in industry.

Transitioning first classes from C to go would make great sense, but it looks like a lot of schools already replaced C with Java and C++ as first languages.

Personally, I do think there is merit in teaching a primarily imperative language first, if only to appreciate other paradigms later and get an inkling of what is really going on beneath your code.

[brudgers]

What I took from the Coursera version of the UW course was that SML gets out of the way and let Grossman cover the material at a higher level of abstraction than language syntax. On the other hand, his Programming Languages class is not intended to be introductory.

I won't say anything about Python.

[Yunk]

I also thought SML worked quite well at that level, but I think the initial negativity on the forums about an unknown language reflected what to expect from a larger portion of 101 students.

> I won't say anything about Python.

I will try to learn from your wisdom.