Is it true? It's easy to spout platitudes about what learners should and should not have to learn and why, but have they been tested? A lot of people who went to my school would have preferred a curriculum based on Python and writing games, but the ones that graduated seem pretty glad they instead endured a curriculum based on C and culminating in compiler writing.

I'm happy to live in a post-Alan Kay world, but I think maybe it's time to dust off that sculpture of Dijkstra we keep in storage and move it out into the foyer. Programming is hard; glossing over what makes it hard in the name of doing stuff sooner may or may not help, but as long as we debate it without testing it empirically we're sure to get nowhere.