Comment by deepsun
6 days ago
My experience also shown that Python, being considered "simple", is actually harder for students to learn. Things I took as obvious are not for first time coders:
Ok, so spaces and indentation matter. How many spaces exactly there should be around `=`?
`a[1]` -- does it fetch something or does it modify something?
`for k, v in a.items():` or `for i in range(10):` -- waaa? How many spaces there should be?
What do you mean my Python script doesn't run, you see I clicked it and it runs. What do you mean "interpreter"?
And the main issue -- types. I'm 100% convinced now that the first language must be strictly-typed, like Java, and don't use `var`, always use explicit types. Otherwise students don't think in terms of types, but "what I put there" like it can hold anything.
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