Comment by passivegains
1 day ago
this is absolutely true, but there's an additional nuance: yes, python is fantastic, yes, it's easy and forgiving, but there are other languages like that too. ...except there really aren't. other than ruby and maybe go, every other popular language sacrifices ease of use for things that simply do not matter for the overwhelming majority of programs. much of python's popularity doesn't come from being easy and forgiving, it's that everything else isn't. for normal programming why would we subject ourselves to anything but python unless we had no choice?
while I'm on the soapbox I'll give java a special mention: a couple years ago I'd have said java was easy even though it's tedious and annoying, but I've become reacquainted with it for a high school program (python wouldn't work for what they're doing and the school's comp sci class already uses java.)
this year we're switching to c++.
Omg, switching to C++ for pupils programming beginners ... "How to turn off the most students from computer programming?" 101. Really can't get much worse than C++ for beginners.
PSU (Oregon) uses C++ as just "c with classes" and ignores the rest of C++ for intro to programming courses. It frustrates people who already use C++ but otherwise works pretty well.
We should distinguish "First language" classes (for Computer Scientists who will likely learn many other languages and are expected to graduate knowing enough to just pick up another language with self study in reasonable time) from "Only language" classes for subjects where you might find it useful to write some software. These have different goals, it wouldn't make sense to teach say, OCaml as the only language but it's entirely reasonable as a first language.
This was how we learned it in an intro class in highschool ages ago, worked pretty well there too.
C++, The Good Parts
Back in the 1990's, C++ used to be taught at high school students and first year university students.
Cough, Lisp.