> But will using the immediate API help them grasp some of the concepts of OpenGL?
No, not a single one.
immediate mode had gl_Vertex, gl_Normal, gl_Color. Those are all gone. immediate mode had lighting, that's now hiding the fact that modern GL has no lighting, you have to write it yourself. Old GL has no normal maps, no opacity maps, no specular maps. Old GL had a matrix library. That's gone to.
You learn almost nothing from immediate mode GL that is relevant to modern GL.
You could argue you learn about some common 3D concepts like a projection matrix and a model matrix but since you don't actually work with the math in old GL you aren't really learning anything more than you could learn from any other 3D library built on top of GL.
No, not a single one.
immediate mode had gl_Vertex, gl_Normal, gl_Color. Those are all gone. immediate mode had lighting, that's now hiding the fact that modern GL has no lighting, you have to write it yourself. Old GL has no normal maps, no opacity maps, no specular maps. Old GL had a matrix library. That's gone to.
You learn almost nothing from immediate mode GL that is relevant to modern GL.
You could argue you learn about some common 3D concepts like a projection matrix and a model matrix but since you don't actually work with the math in old GL you aren't really learning anything more than you could learn from any other 3D library built on top of GL.