Experiences/guidance on teaching Python as a first programming language

[Rhodri James]

On Tue, 17 Dec 2013 15:51:44 -0000, Wolfgang Keller <feliphil at gmx.net>  
wrote:

> The only issue for me was to figure out how to do in C what I already
> knew in Pascal. And I had to waste a *lot* more time and mental effort
> to mess with that language than it took for me to learn *both* the
> basics of programming per se *and* Pascal in the first class at my home
> university.

It's sounds like you made, and are carrying on making, one of the classic  
mistakes of software engineering: you're trying to write one language in  
the style of another.  It is possible to write C code as if it were  
Pascal, but it's a painful process and it won't be pretty.  It's far  
better to use a language as it is rather than as you want it to be.

-- 
Rhodri James *-* Wildebeest Herder to the Masses