What gets used in daily practice by professionals is the result of historical and cultural factors that in no way imply that we made choices optimized what is best for learners. Fortran won over Lisp because (in part) we didn’t know how to compile Lisp efficiently, but we do now and we know how to teach Lisp well. C++ and then Java won over Pascal because of perceptions of what industry wanted, not because of data and not because Pascal was shown to be ineffective for learners. [computinged.wordpress.com]
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