But I 'got' java. It's possible this is related to having dabbled with QBasic on a commodore 64, PowerBasic on an IBM-PC, and some x86 assembler, but my classmates without any experience universally just didn't really 'get' CAML or LISP and I kept catching them at thinking up the answer in an iterative way, and then dreading the 'hard part' of figuring out how to re-imagine that as functional.
Even when the exercises were designed specifically to be easy to write and understand in an ML variant.
I think the conclusion is that either society / community at large somehow prepares you for 'the paradigm' of iterative languages (I don't mean the IT world, I mean _all_ of society), or it's just easier to get it and start writing basics, vs. functional.
But I 'got' java. It's possible this is related to having dabbled with QBasic on a commodore 64, PowerBasic on an IBM-PC, and some x86 assembler, but my classmates without any experience universally just didn't really 'get' CAML or LISP and I kept catching them at thinking up the answer in an iterative way, and then dreading the 'hard part' of figuring out how to re-imagine that as functional.
Even when the exercises were designed specifically to be easy to write and understand in an ML variant.
I think the conclusion is that either society / community at large somehow prepares you for 'the paradigm' of iterative languages (I don't mean the IT world, I mean _all_ of society), or it's just easier to get it and start writing basics, vs. functional.