What if...

What if Perl was used as the programming language in an introduction to programming course?

This first thing they'd write would be a Perl parser.

>>2
Not likely. They'd use an extremely restricted subset. Introduction to programming is supposed to be simple; no one would seriously clog it with the useless crap the OP is probably masturbating/fantasizing about.

For the same reason, you'll never see a CS 101 in INTERCAL.

Everyone would fail. Duh.

TRITE JOKE TIME
One of the projects would be to make a garbage collector so Perl would collect itself.

Perl sigils are almost as annoying as Lisp parens.

>>5
You're right, I don't find them annoying.

It's really a matter of getting a good keyboard layout. Swap [] with () and you'll find it's not so bad. It should be able to type out all of the core functionality of a language without using the shift key, though.

>>7
True. I have ()',? unshifted and my life is definitely better.