alt Hacker News> So why teach someone a language that doesn't have if, while, (local) variables, scopes, types, nor even real function calls?
You can teach them how to implement function calls, variables and loops using assembly, to show them how they work under the hood and how they should be thankful for having simple if in their high level languages like C.
That often leaves people with very bad mental models of how programs actually compile in modern optimizing compilers and in modern operating systems (e.g. people end up believing that variables always live on the stack, that function parameters are passed on the stack, that loops are executed in the same way regardless of how you write them, etc).