Experiences/guidance on teaching Python as a first programming language

[rusi]

On Tuesday, December 10, 2013 4:12:53 PM UTC+5:30, Oscar Benjamin wrote:
> On 9 December 2013 19:57, Terry Reedy  wrote:
> > On 12/9/2013 7:23 AM, Oscar Benjamin wrote:
> >> Hi all,
> >> I work in a University Engineering faculty teaching, among other
> >> things, programming. In our last meeting about improving our teaching
> >> syllabus and delivery we've identified the first year programming
> >> courses as an area where there is room for improvement and we're
> >> considering (mainly on my suggestion) switching to using Python as the
> >> first programming language that we use to introduce our students to
> >> programming. I'm interested to know if anyone can share experience of
> >> a similar situation or can point to any case studies about this.
> > A few years ago, MIT switched from Scheme (which I believe originated at
> > MIT) to Python for its first course. There might faculty blogs discussing
> > the reasons.

> Thanks Terry. The best I've found is this:
> http://cemerick.com/2009/03/24/why-mit-now-uses-python-instead-of-scheme-for-its-undergraduate-cs-program/

There's this
http://danweinreb.org/blog/why-did-mit-switch-from-scheme-to-python
which seems to have died -- the internet archive has it here
https://web.archive.org/web/20120429151818/http://danweinreb.org/blog/why-did-mit-switch-from-scheme-to-python

Neither really talks of why python was chosen

In that direction you may want to see why Java has been ousted from CMU:
http://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/teaching-fp-to-freshmen/