(Replying next to you because I can't reply deeper)
I don't feel you were overharsh, you justifiably called my bullshit, which is an important thing to do once in a while.
Re: Brainfuck in education, it's not about unfamiliarity, it's about time-to-grasp-core-idea, and number-of-other-ideas-you-need-to-understand-first. You really want to minimize those.
Specifically in teaching asm, you want your students to reach as fast as possible the state where they completely wrap their head about all the details and edge cases of the machine. Brainfuck is a really simple machine, very easy to hold completely in your head. Even the simplest RISC processor that can do anything real would require you to first understand binary, hex, two's complement, the idea and implementation of a stack, and so many more things...
I don't feel you were overharsh, you justifiably called my bullshit, which is an important thing to do once in a while.
Re: Brainfuck in education, it's not about unfamiliarity, it's about time-to-grasp-core-idea, and number-of-other-ideas-you-need-to-understand-first. You really want to minimize those.
Specifically in teaching asm, you want your students to reach as fast as possible the state where they completely wrap their head about all the details and edge cases of the machine. Brainfuck is a really simple machine, very easy to hold completely in your head. Even the simplest RISC processor that can do anything real would require you to first understand binary, hex, two's complement, the idea and implementation of a stack, and so many more things...
For another example see this Twitter discussion between David Beazly, Aaron Meurer and myself on the subject of teaching TDD to complete beginners: https://twitter.com/dabeaz/status/879487816538914817