One thing that doesn't seem to be called out and that's the 'overhead' of a language i.e. compilation, libraries, resources etc. - vs - a simple opportunity to

One thing that doesn't seem to be called out and that's the 'overhead' of a language i.e. compilation, libraries, resources etc. - vs - a simple opportunity to teach basic programming principles and algorithms. Python and Javascript have very low barriers to entry for the overhead (it can get complicated but for small programs it's easy). You can use those to teach a lot of basic things. In my own education we started with C/C++ and we were all drowning in pointers 80% of the time, the actual course material was pedantic. What Uni tends to not focus on very well is just teaching the real, applicable basics of a language, with some good professional 'best practices' and students can spend years wasting their time trying to get things to compile, lost in bad manpages etc.. Start with something 'very light' and for everything else - provide a short 101 course for languages of instruction which focus on the practical mechanics of the language and nothing else. Those courses might even be taught by professional developers, outside of the regular kind of pedagogy. It feels 'not very academic' but that's the reality of the discipline. If you want to teach architecture, and expect students to 'build buildings' ... you need to teach them properly how to use the hammer, nails, measuring tape - even if that in and of itself is not particularly academic.