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> I will never forget Rust for... Fuck, this made me feel old. It blows my mind that the learning path Rust then Python even exists. When I started school in

• zozbot234 1y ago
  Rust is a lot simpler than C++ and arguably Python itself, so it's not a huge surprise that it turns out to be viable as a first programming language. Especially since some parts of it can be taught as pretty much a pure functional language at the outset (actually this works quite well, right up until you really need interior mutability - which is not that often), which makes for a good intuition of what keeps the borrow checker happy.
  • tialaramex 1y ago
    I believe Rust could work as a First language for CS students, but I don't expect it will ever make sense as the sole language we teach to non-CS students who need programmability as a potential skill, the same way they may need stats, or some of mathematics, or various other skills (I did Contract Law for example). The prominence of Python for those students makes sense to me, thirty years ago I'm sure a BASIC would have been fine too. It doesn't need to be elegant, or have good performance, it does matter that it's free, and that there's a lot of existing crap written in Python you can crib from.
    • zozbot234 1y ago
      Python makes even less sense as a language for CS-naïve students. It has bonkers semantics, and the "intuitive" syntax only really helps when writing tiny, trivial programs.