Experiences/guidance on teaching Python as a first programming language

[Joel Goldstick]

On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 1:20 PM, Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 18, 2013 at 5:03 AM, rusi <rustompmody at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Tuesday, December 17, 2013 8:21:39 PM UTC+5:30, Neil Cerutti wrote:
> >> I can't think of a reference, but I to recall that
> >> bugs-per-line-of-code is nearly constant; it is not language
> >> dependent. So, unscientifically, the more work you can get done
> >> in a line of code, then the fewer bugs you'll have per amount of
> >> work done.
> >
>
If its true that bugs per line of code is more or less a constant, I think
the key is that some languages are more expressive than others.  So, in
assembler, you are moving data around registers, and doing basic math,
etc.  It takes a lot of code to get something done.  So maybe more bugs.
Moving up the ladder to C, which is in a way high level assembly language,
you get more done in few lines.  Python or other languages maybe do more
per line than C  (eg the for loop in python does a lot with very little
code because of python having iterable stuff built in)  So, if you have a
language that is expressive and fits your programming needs, you will have
less to debug -- not because you don't make as many errors, but the good
code just does more for you


-- 
Joel Goldstick
http://joelgoldstick.com
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