I really don&#x27;t disagree with the substance of your comment, though the Algol-family languages tend to be hard because of disorganized core libraries and occasionally cumbersome syntax rather than because they depend on unfamiliar mathematical constructs.<p>I have little experience in education, but my naive hypothesis is that it would be easier to teach a child, say, Python than any FP-oriented language. I suppose it goes without saying that if children were introduced to the lambda calculus beforehand this might not remain true.<p>See my comment beneath the root to see my clarification of the original post.<p>I don&#x27;t think Dijkstra would disagree with me. After all, it was he who suggested the average American programmer would benefit &quot;more from learning, say, Latin than yet another programming language.&quot;