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I think this is one of the best points for Python as a teaching language. It's not just approachable, it's also practical. I think most of the positive points

by sah 18y ago

I think this is one of the best points for Python as a teaching language. It's not just approachable, it's also practical. I think most of the positive points mentioned here also apply to Ruby.

jrockway 18y ago
Ruby requires you to understand OO to understand the language. While every CS student eventually needs to understand OO, it's not something I would want to explain in the first lecture. For that reason, I agree with the article that Python (or Scheme) is a good starting language. You can start with nothing, and add concepts until you understand the whole language. You don't need to know programming before you can understand "hello world". (Amusingly, I don't really like Python or Scheme, but I do like Perl and CL. I'm not sure what that says about my personality, but I'm sure it's something :)
- sah 18y ago
  What's so mysterious about puts "hello, world"? I think you have a mistaken impression of Ruby.
  - jrockway 18y ago
    You have to explain what "hello, world".puts does.
    - sah 18y ago
      It throws a NoMethodError, because strings don't have that method. And you can introduce that kind of syntax at roughly the same time you'd have to in Python.