> The idea that only one language or any particular language is critical to learning what it means to program is false. If that is your goal, to teach people how to build programs, BASIC is perfectly satisfactory. There are some things you can’t do in it; therefore, you invent constructions for doing them; and the invention of these constructions is learning to program.
Then later:
> But to get people into that world, to get people into that world from universities and high schools, it’s imperative that they learn APL before they become contaminated by BASIC. And I say that very seriously.
Maybe the point is subtle: that it's important to teach both APL and other programming languages, but definitely APL early on or that way of thinking is too hard to reach. Or maybe there is just some cognitive dissonance there and it's actually a contradiction in this talk.