"The second approach to teaching programming is to use a mini-language to provide a more functionally oriented introduction to programming. Mini-environments provide students with practical, hands-on experience in environments tailored to their capabilities and needs. The problem with using mini-languages based on real-world languages is that they are inherently complex. It is unfortunate that much of the inherent conceptual complexity of the underlying programming language is carried over to the resulting mini-languages. Another problem is that real-world languages evolve constantly, that new languages are created every few years. Mini-environments based on real-world languages must therefore evolve as well."

"The theory of computation offers a way out of the problems of complexity and constant evolution of the above approaches to teaching programming. We propose to use computational models as the models of programming in mini-environments. These models have properties which are highly desirable in introductory programming models. In education, we should strive for utmost conceptual simplicity. Theoretical models of computation are designed to be as simple as possible. They contain only a small number of semantically simple operations. For real life objectives, this may pose a formidable stumbling block and make many tasks difficult beyond practicality. However, in an educational setting, the problems to be solved can be chosen so as to be easily solved within the formal system."