i haven't followed the link so i don't know if he already covered this, but at MIT, 6.001 the intro programming class is taught in scheme, which is a variant of lisp. only programming language i've ever learned. (which is not to say i remember any of it now :/
Ah, an "easy answer": someone's already done/doing the experiment, so all I have to do is pay close attention to the programmers who've come out of MIT. (And, uh, anyone scared off from becoming a programmer because of that course, too, I guess.)
Graham does eventually mention 6.001 in passing, in "Being Popular" (http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html), but it's a passing reference without much context: "[the hackers] who took 6.001 and understood it". I wouldn't have known that was intro-programming, being unfamiliar with MIT's numbering scheme, if I hadn't seen your comment first.
of course, the confounding factor here is that many, possibly most, of the people who come to MIT to do course 6 are the sort who have been programming since they were 8, so while 6.001 (pronounced "six double-oh-one" and frequently referred to as just "double-oh-one") may be their first college programming experience, it's probably not the first programming language they've been exposed to.
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Graham does eventually mention 6.001 in passing, in "Being Popular" (http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html), but it's a passing reference without much context: "[the hackers] who took 6.001 and understood it". I wouldn't have known that was intro-programming, being unfamiliar with MIT's numbering scheme, if I hadn't seen your comment first.
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