Have you tried teaching coding by starting with a functional language?

FWIW this was common in British universities in the early 2000s -- the intro CS courses would be taught in a functional language like SML or OCaml. I think the professors liked that you don't end up with this situation where half the class already learned C and is bored, and half didn't and are going to need to spend a few months understanding what a pointer is. Everyone's equally unfamiliar with SML.

I think they've all switched to Python or Java now, though.

If so, what were the results? How did people react when you showed them non-functional languages later?