Let me be completely politically incorrect and suggest that students be
encouraged to learn a language of their choice, and that some attention
should be paid to the virtue of the inclusion of the GO TO statement in
any reasonable language. Furthermore they should be told that no one is
ever going to read their code, so a minimum number of comment cards (damn
it, gave it away!) should be used, including only those necessary to the
purposes of the original writer of the code. Learning the same language
favored by a friend might facilitate learning too, even if that language
is not considered kosher by the computer "science" authorities.
Later on the student may be allowed to learn structure and etiquette, but
she should not be denied the exhilaration attendant to the immediate
gratification provided by running code that does just what she wanted it
to do. We old codgers never took programming courses, and still we
learned. I got a copy of McCracken and a key punch and went to work. It
didn't take long to get that first thrill, I'll tell you. Why should
others be deprived of it by having unnecessary obstacles placed before
them because they are so unfortunate as to have to learn structured
programming and to spend time writing grammatically correct documentation
for the eyes of a teacher?
[Those who hate my bragging about my kids stop here.] One of my sons
learned APL and within a year he had achieved the level that used to be
considered The Test for APLers (a test I never tried, but probably could
not pass myself): He wrote a "Game of Life" program in a single line of
APL code (256 or fewer characters). Learning computer programming is self-
motivating. Time and opportunity are almost all that are necessary, and a
bit of reinforcement by praise is better than pointing out that a program
is an incomprehensible rat's nest - even if it is, but it works!
The point here is this: computer programming is not necessarily something
that has to be taught. Like other language, with a facility for
communication (access to other speakers of the language or to a computer)
the student will naturally learn by himself. Later on, as we do in English
composition classes, we can teach him the refinements which are
undisputably valuable. As has been pointed out several times, learning yet
another language at this point is usually very easy.
Excluding GO TO from a computer language is equivalent to ignoring
anything a child says unless she speaks in complete sentences and eschews
idolectic excesses. Can you imagine what a barrier to learning English
that might be for the child?