I've been an assistant to a professor teaching introductory programming at a university. And we chose ML (later Haskell), as the first programming language, exactly because of this reason. Weaker students with no programming experience can build their knowledge on top of their mathematical knowledge from school. Whereas stronger students, with lots of programming experience, were challenged to reconsider their assumptions. Both groups did learn significantly.
> Your math department doesn't begin with addition
Well, ... actually, ... "Mathematik für Informatiker I" (mathematics for computer scientist I) did start with groups, then abelian groups, i.e. addition.
While I'd say Haskell is great (in general). I do have some reservations with using it as a intro lang, because the type system is almost a language of it's own. So you have two learn two things at the same time.
In LISPs you program the AST directly. No serious type system (usually). They are very "small" languages.
I've been an assistant to a professor teaching introductory programming at a university. And we chose ML (later Haskell), as the first programming language, exactly because of this reason. Weaker students with no programming experience can build their knowledge on top of their mathematical knowledge from school. Whereas stronger students, with lots of programming experience, were challenged to reconsider their assumptions. Both groups did learn significantly.
> Your math department doesn't begin with addition
Well, ... actually, ... "Mathematik für Informatiker I" (mathematics for computer scientist I) did start with groups, then abelian groups, i.e. addition.