Do any of you recommend Python as a first programming language?

[Arnaud Delobelle]

On Mar 22, 7:00 pm, Larry Bates <larry.ba... at websafe.com`> wrote:
> jmDesktop wrote:
> > For students 9th - 12th grade, with at least Algebra I.  Do you think
> > Python is a good first programming language for someone with zero
> > programming experience?  Using Linux and Python for first exposure to
> > programming languages and principles.
>
> > Thank you.
>
> ABSOLUTELY.  Get them started with a REAL programming language that will
> teach them proper fundamentals.  I wish Python would have been around 25
> years ago when I taught incoming Freshmen at local University.  To get
> students to understand about variable references, etc. I always started
> them with Assembler so they could understand what was actually going on.
> I see so may on this forum that have the wrong ideas about variable names/
> storage.

It's funny, 25 years ago - I was 10 then - I got my first computer
from my cousin (a Sinclair ZX81, I think it had a different name in
the US) as he was getting a brand new C64.  In those days BASIC was
very slow so if you wanted to do anything demanding with a computer
you had to learn 'machine language' (I didn't have an assembler...).
I wrote my little programs in a notebook, then POKEd them into
memory!  I learnt so much then.  Years later, when I got my first C
compiler, it was a liberation.

My other 'coming of age' was when I took a lambda-calculus course at
university.  I felt like a man who's had a black and white TV set all
his life and watches colour TV for the first time.  What if computers
had been designed as 'lambda-calculus machines' from the start rather
than Turing machines?

Anyway, here the conclusion that I draw: learn lambda-calculus and
Turing machines.  The rest is syntactic sugar.

Not quite seriously but still'ly yours
--
Arnaud