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> Python was originally a teaching programming language. You know, for kids and first-year students, as a replacement for BASIC. Ummm, what? I don't think that

• namaria 2y ago
  I'm with Dijkstra on this one. Teaching people these simplified languages full of magic and which encourage all sorts of bad design decisions by omission cripples their mind.
  • edanm 2y ago
    If you're referring to Python, I wouldn't call it simplified, and considering that it is one of the most used languages in real-world production code, then I definitely don't think there's any problem with teaching it. I also don't know the context of what Dijkstra said, but in general I think teaching people simplified things as a first step is often a great pedagogic method, so this sounds... wrong?
    • namaria 2y ago
      I think there's a problem in starting with such languages. It fills the mind with vague and subtly wrong mental models that are hard to change. I know a lot of developers who can't see beyond the text box where they have to get some code to run and that's detrimental to them and to the industry. I believe that teaching should focus on fundamentals and how to compose them rather then straight to 'let's write some code in this box and get some magical results, you don't need to know more than that'.