It seemed like a silly idea then, but in hindsight was a genius move. It normalised the class (prior knowledge in a real didn't matter), and taught programming from first principles. Picking up new languages after this was significancy easier.
You are lucky. For first 8 years of my software career, I did not know anything other than C-based languages (except Lisp). Haskell made me realize what 'real' computer science is.
It seemed like a silly idea then, but in hindsight was a genius move. It normalised the class (prior knowledge in a real didn't matter), and taught programming from first principles. Picking up new languages after this was significancy easier.