Experiences/guidance on teaching Python as a first programming language

[Roy Smith]

In article <07c6e6a3-c5f4-4846-9551-434bdaba8b50 at googlegroups.com>,
 rusi <rustompmody at gmail.com> wrote:

> Soon the foo has to split into foo1.c and foo2.c.  And suddenly you need to
> understand:
> 
> 1. Separate compilation
> 2. Make (which is separate from 'separate compilation')
> 3. Header files and libraries and the connection and difference

None of that is specific to C.  Virtually any language (including 
Python) allows a program to be split up into multiple source files.  If 
you're running all but the most trivial example, you need to know how to 
manage these multiple files and how the pieces interact.

It's pretty common here to have people ask questions about how import 
works.  How altering sys.path effects import.  Why is import not finding 
my module?  You quickly get into things like virtualenv, and now you've 
got modules coming from your source tree, from your vitualenv, from your 
system library.  You need to understand all of that to make it all work.