TL;DR: The thing that surprised me most wasn't which language students struggled with — it was when they struggled. TAing an intro CS course using Racket, I watched students hit a wall on recursion around week three, then suddenly click and start writing elegant list processors by we 📖 Reading time: ~30 min What's in this article The Setup: Two Semesters, Two Languages, Very Different Pain Getting Both Installed Without Losing Your Mind Where Scheme Wins: The First Two Weeks of a Functional Course Where Haskell Wins: Once Students Need to Think in Types The Honest Rough Edges of Each Head-to-Head: Scheme vs Haskell by Use Case When to Pick Scheme When to Pick Haskell The Setup: Two Semesters, Two Languages, Very Different Pain The thing that surprised me most wasn't which language students struggled with — it was when they struggled. TAing an intro CS course using Racket, I watched students hit a wall on recursion around week three, then suddenly click and start writing elegant list processors by week five.…