I know this is anecdotal: at my undergrad state university (UT) the intro to programming for non-programmers (I was a liberal arts major) was (is?) Haskell. Personally, I think it's a great first language---along with Python. "Getting stuff done" Haskell has virtually no learning curve. Generally, you can introduce new (deeper) concepts as the student's & learner's run into issues on the 5th or 6th time.
I think UT's pass-rate for it's Haskell class is just as good as TAMU's intro-to-programming (which is C/++).
Comments
I know this is anecdotal: at my undergrad state university (UT) the intro to programming for non-programmers (I was a liberal arts major) was (is?) Haskell. Personally, I think it's a great first language---along with Python. "Getting stuff done" Haskell has virtually no learning curve. Generally, you can introduce new (deeper) concepts as the student's & learner's run into issues on the 5th or 6th time.
I think UT's pass-rate for it's Haskell class is just as good as TAMU's intro-to-programming (which is C/++).