Honestly, the decision of a first language doesn't even matter that much. Beginners need to learn how to program, by which I mean understanding and writing sequ

Honestly, the decision of a first language doesn't even matter that much. Beginners need to learn how to program, by which I mean understanding and writing sequential logic. This is by far the biggest barrier. Without it, you get "wizard" programmers: Those who copy-paste magical incantations with no understanding of even the basic underlying logical flow. You can use any language to teach this, but it should absolutely be the primary focus for absolute beginners. And it really doesn't matter what you use, because even in C or C++ you should not be providing skeleton code with all the boilerplate and complete build scripts.