I think a better message to send to programmers is not "don't learn Python as your first language", but rather "don't think Python is the only game in town". Pe

I think a better message to send to programmers is not "don't learn Python as your first language", but rather "don't think Python is the only game in town". People should never suggest that you should pigeonhole yourself into one language or one programming paradigm. I know many people who learned Python as their very first language and are currently proficient in languages like C and Haskell and Scala. If you really care about cars, you should learn a stick shift. If you really care about programming and computing, you should learn C. But just because you learn an automatic first, to ease you into driving, doesn't necessarily mean you're any less likely to go and learn to drive a stick. If you're really interested in using and understanding cars, you'll realize automatic is not the end-all-be-all. The same is true for programming. >It's also important that programming is still very young. The entirety of the human race has only been programming for about 3 generations, and only now are the first programmers beginning to die of old age. I often think about this too. What languages will be the gold standards in 30 or 50 years from now? Or 100? Will people view Python and Ruby as many people view COBOL and Pascal today?