Experiences/guidance on teaching Python as a first programming language

[Mark Lawrence]

On 19/12/2013 04:29, rusi wrote:
> On Thursday, December 19, 2013 6:19:04 AM UTC+5:30, Rhodri James wrote:
>> On Tue, 17 Dec 2013 15:51:44 -0000, Wolfgang Keller 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.
>
> Yes but the reverse is also true: Sometimes the best code in language
> L is first conceptualized in design-language D and then 'coded' into
> L.
>
> When we were students D was called 'flow-charts'
> Gone out of fashion today and replaced by UML.
>
> Now I expect the majority on this list to not care for UML.
> However the idea of a separate design language is not negated by the fact
> that UML is overkill and silly.
>
> eg Saw this (on the Erlang mailing list)
> In some Australian university (in the 90s) 2 sems of Cobol was
> replaced by 1 sem Scheme + 1 sem Cobol.  Students learnt more Cobol in
> the second arrangement than in the first. [Note: 'More Cobol' not 'More
> Programming']
>
> Now if you were to ask those *students* I would expect similar
> emotions towards Cobol as Wolfgang is expressing towards C.
> That is however a separate issue :D
>

If C is such a crap language, what does it says for the thousands of 
languages that never got anywhere?  Or did C simply have a far larger 
sales and marketing budget? :)

-- 
My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask 
what you can do for our language.

Mark Lawrence