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Your first programming language doesn't have to be a practical language, and it doesn't have to be powerful. Small languages which allow students to master the
by RodgerTheGreat 11y ago
Your first programming language doesn't have to be a practical language, and it doesn't have to be powerful. Small languages which allow students to master the entirety of the language are a better tool for building confidence and teaching elementary ideas like sequence, variables and iteration. For the first steps of dipping your toes into programming, BASIC is better than Python. An ideal curriculum will expose students to a progression of languages as they outgrow the limits of each environment.
- teddyh 11y agoI’ll just briefly say that I disagree. I believe that my development and education as a programmer was severely hampered by BASIC’s lack of functions, and I would not wish it on anyone else. Python has many obvious separate levels of learning it. At first, one could learn line-by-line coding, as done in the interactive interpreter, gradually moving into loops. Then, one could spend a long time with functions, dipping deeper and deeper into data types, sequences, recursion, etc. Only after this could one even mention classes and object oriented programming. There is no reason to assume that one would need to learn all of Python all at once. A good language is also a language which allows its users to grow, not a toy language which teaches its users the futility of ever trying to accomplish anything serious, which is precisely the feeling I got from BASIC.