Also relevant is EWD's belief that exposure to BASIC inflicts permanent damage on a student's brains.

edit:

> It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.

from EWD498: How do we tell truths that might hurt? (http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD04xx/EW...)