It is not only the violin that shapes the violinist, we are all shaped by the tools we train ourselves to use, and in this respect programming languages have a devious influence: they shape our thinking habits. This circumstance makes the choice of first programming language so important.
E.W. Dijkstra: To the members of the Budget Council (concerning Haskell), 12 April 2001
It's sad but probable that I will learn less during the next century than this one.
I saw now that in my desire to know theorics I had taken shortcuts that, just like shortcuts on a map, turned out to be longcuts. Whenever I’d seen Jesry get it quicker than me, I had misread equations in a way that had seemed easier at the time but made things harder—no, impossible—later.
Fraa Orolo in Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Bonus point if you make them believe you can only program in Haskell on NixOS.
The world's first linear algebra book with fully interactive figures.
J. Ström, K. Åström, and T. Akenine-Möller: Immersive Linear Algebra
It seems crucial to learn a language properly before you develop intuitions about what sounds wrong.
"We left the boxes in the village. Closed. Taped shut. No instruction, no human being. I thought, the kids will play with the boxes! Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, but found the on/off switch. He'd never seen an on/off switch. He powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs [in English] in the village. And within five months, they had hacked Android. Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera! And they figured out it had a camera, and they hacked Android.
Nicholas Negroponte about leaving children alone with technology