Pico (programming language)

Pico Pico is a programming languaged developed at the PROG lab at the Free University of Brussels. The fundamental aim of Pico is to introduce the essentials of computer programming to undergraduate students in the basic sciences other than computer science. In conceiving Pico, the PROG lab was strongly inspired by the approach used in Abelson and Sussman's book "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" and equally strongly repulsed by the various standards efforts to teach computer programming at the high-school and academic level. Pico can actually be viewed as an effort to render Scheme palatable and even enjoyable to people unable or unwilling to make the intellectual effort necessary to grasp its elegance and power. It is done so by adapting Scheme's syntax (significantly) and semantics (subtly) in order to use what (little) understanding the novice science student has of (specification) languages.

The word Pico should be interpreted as synonymous with very small (according to Webster's). The idea was indeed to have a very small language with a very general impact.