[Haskell-cafe] Python?

[Daniel Carrera]

Hello,

This might be a strange question to ask on a Haskell list, but I do want 
to hear your opinions. What do you think of Python?

To explain where this question is comming from:

I have a lady friend who wants to learn how to program. I just decided 
to teach her Python for practical reasons:

1) Python has a nice IDE-ish thing. It's called "idle". It includes both 
a shell and an editor. The interface is simple and clear.

2) I can't get Helium to compile (since I can't get ghc to run) on Solaris.

3) Python has some nice introductory documentation. The Haskell 
documentation is more advanced.

4) She's interested in writing an OOo plugin some day. Python can do that.

But I do hesitate. I would like to teach her Haskell because I think 
it's a better language. But I just don't seem to have the tools to teach 
it to a complete beginner (idle, documentation).

So I'm thinking that perhaps I can use Python, but try to teach her 
functional principles, like not changing the value of a variable and not 
letting her functions have side-effects.

Given my circunstances, do you think that's a reasonable approach for 
teaching her how to program?

Cheers,
Daniel.