Why not both? Sacrifice a little from each so that you can do both, and they will give a bit of context to each other. If you only go tools-first you risk trea

Why not both? Sacrifice a little from each so that you can do both, and they will give a bit of context to each other. If you only go tools-first you risk treating the tools like "black magic" without really understanding what's happening. With only fundamentals-first you lose relevance for biologists. Give them enough on fundamentals (i.e. variables, functions, loops, conditions, scope, basic data structures) so that they can appreciate how the tools do what they do. Beware false dichotomies.