Experiences/guidance on teaching Python as a first programming language

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, 18 Dec 2013 17:15:30 +0000, Mark Lawrence wrote:

> On 18/12/2013 08:18, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>>
>> The C99 standard lists 191 different kinds of undefined behavior,
>> including what happens when there is an unmatched ' or " on a line of
>> source code.
>>
>> No compile-time error, no run-time error, just blindingly fast and
>> correct (according to the standard) code that does the wrong thing.
>>
>>
> Plenty of compile-time warnings depending on the compiler, which the
> CPython core devs take a great deal of trouble to eliminate on every
> buildbot.

Correct. The *great deal of trouble* part is important. Things which are 
the responsibility of the language and compiler in (say) Java, D, Rust, 
Go, etc. are the responsibility of the programmer with C.

I mention these languages as they are all intended to be safer languages 
than C while still being efficient. Whether they succeed or not is 
another question.

Now, I wish to be absolutely clear. There are certain programming areas 
where squeezing out every last iota of performance is important, and to 
do so may require making some compromises on correctness or safety. I 
find the C standard's position on undefined behaviour to be 
irresponsible, but, hey, maybe it is justified on the basis that C is a 
systems language intended for use in writing performance-critical 
operating system kernels, device drivers and similar. It's fine for 
Python to promise that nothing you do will ever cause a segfault, but for 
a language used to write kernels and device drivers, you probably want 
something more powerful and less constrained.

But why is so much non-performance critical code written in C? Why so 
many user-space applications? History has shown us that the decision to 
prefer efficiency-by-default rather than correctness-by-default has been 
a disaster for software safety and security. C language practically is 
the embodiment of premature optimization: the language allows compilers 
to silently throw your code away in order to generate efficient code by 
default, whether you need it or not.


-- 
Steven