Python is a great first language
By
Tom Morris
on March 21, 2007
Serious consideration should be payed to teaching Python as a first language, since it is a great first language
Agreed
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75.5% 24.5%
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Discussion (7)
I don't know python yet.
My first language is German, and I think that was a good choice.
As an educational programming language, python is damn good, however. A first programming language should certainly be a member of the set scheme, python, or Alice.
D'A
I still miss fourth and logo though
My 9-year-old sister has been learning Ruby through hackety-hack. Try writing a blog in your first few hours of using Python.
Its inconsistency and poor OO model make it a very bad model with a lot of caveats that have to be taught and can lead to confusion: do all OO models require self to be explicitly passed and referenced? do all OO models use __foo__ for functions that should not be called directly?
If you're trying to convince me of anything, argument from ubiquity is a bad choice. No, not all OO models are like Python's, but that means absolutely nothing.
D'A
Python has an extremely clean syntax. A 'Hello World' program in Java is mind-numbing due to its syntactic noise. C shifts the focus on to the wrong things -- memory management, pointers, etc. But one should definitely learn C at some point to really appreciate what's under the hood.
Someone needs to write a book "How to mess with your babies mind by speaking exclusively in a programming language"