I completely agree with you regarding the simplicity of Scheme! But that’s exactly why I don’t think Scheme should be people’s first introduction to programming. You need to give them friendly abstractions[1] that make them realize what is possible with computing, and only once they get those abstractions, break them down, and show them how the magic is actually implemented.

My opinion isn’t pie-in-the-sky theorizing: I know plenty of intelligent people whose first exposure to programming was Scheme, which scared them off into thinking that “they’re not smart enough for programming” or some bullshit like that. When they later tried a language like Python, they weren’t scared off—they were hooked.

The whole argument in favor of using Scheme as an introduction to programming seems highly ideological, and not at all informed by how people actually learn how to program. The fact that so many online resources successfully (Codecademy, Coursera, etc.) introduce people to programming using high-level languages is evidence that it works.

[1]: I know that all abstractions are leaky, but in the context of an introductory class, they’re not leaky enough.