Experiences/guidance on teaching Python as a first programming language

[Roy Smith]

In article <mailman.3950.1386814058.18130.python-list at python.org>,
 Larry Martell <larry.martell at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 8:42 PM, Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> wrote:
> > 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 :-)
> 
> Nope. Long before that I was working on computers that didn't boot
> when you powered them up, You had to manually key in a bootstrap
> program from the front panel switches.

Or put a boot card in the reader and hit the IPL button :-)