Experiences/guidance on teaching Python as a first programming language

[Roy Smith]

In article <a34ada67-aa04-4f4d-b26d-e941cee03c4c at googlegroups.com>,
 rusi <rustompmody at gmail.com> wrote:

> Kernighan and Ritchie set an important "first" in our field by making
> "Hello World" their first program.

Yup.

> People tend to under-estimate the importance of this:
> Many assumptions need to be verified/truthified/dovetailed
> starting from switching on the machine onwards for this to work.

At the time that they wrote it, very few people who used computers ever 
got anywhere near the power switch :-) But, the point is valid.  To get 
"Hello, world" to print, you've got to figure out a lot of stuff.  
Predating the whole agile movement by two decades, it is the 
quintessential MVP.  It compiles and runs.  The rest is just adding 
features and fixing bugs.