The imp of the perverse

[jbv]

Alain Farmer wrote:

> It's a proven fact that most programmers become
> notably attached to the first language they learned.
> Kind of like a chick (baby duck) which bonds with
> whatever thing is the FIRST that it sees.

What are your sources for that "proven fact" ?

In a very close field, I clearly remember some studies
made in psychology & ergonomics in the early 80's
about the way algorithms are memorized by programers :
- beginners tend to memorize their algo in a specific
language
- experienced programers usually memorize algo
outside any specific language...


> For many of
> us xTalkers, our 1st experience with programming was
> scripting HyperTalk. Only natural, therefore, that it
> seems so "natural" to us.
>


Just for the anecdote, my first experiences with
programming took place in 1978 with Fortran, Cobol
and assembler on a PDP-11... but who cares ?

JB