I agree. My first language, in 1981, was the original line numbered BASIC. We all know its shortcomings as a language, but for most operations, you could at lea

I agree. My first language, in 1981, was the original line numbered BASIC. We all know its shortcomings as a language, but for most operations, you could at least form a concrete mental model of what the computer was doing. You could "run" your program on paper. Helping people learn Python, I end up explaining things like variables by treating them like the old BASIC variables -- hard memory locations containing values, associated with a name. I don't mention that an integer is an object with properties and methods. On the other hand, a beginner tutorial that starts with "venv" is criminal. Sure, the language was primitive, but none of us who learned on obsolete languages were scarred for life. The teacher explained to us the shortcomings of BASIC, and we learned the hard way what spaghetti code is. Most of us were destined to learn Pascal if we made it to college.