One can see why they chose a more-safe version of C for an intro course- beginner C programmers can fall into a wide variety of difficult to debug pitfalls (mem

One can see why they chose a more-safe version of C for an intro course- beginner C programmers can fall into a wide variety of difficult to debug pitfalls (memory leaks, out of bounds reads and writes, undefined behavior) that can make the task of teaching and grading a nightmare. My university opted to use C++ as the introductory programming language, since it is somewhat more safe. Now they are transitioning to even safer languages like Python and Javascript. While I don't agree with it, I can see why it is necessary to reduce the headache for instructors. C0 seems like a good tool to use for teaching, although it may lead to bad habits later. To wrap it up, in my opinion students should definitely be exposed to the concepts of the C family of languages early on: imperative programming, pointers, dynamic memory allocation, et cetera. All the pitfalls associated with these concepts also need to be explored. The language doesn't necessarily matter as long as the students are allowed to make mistakes and learn from them.