Experiences/guidance on teaching Python as a first programming language

[Roy Smith]

In article <mailman.4372.1387390692.18130.python-list at python.org>,
 Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> I've never contemplated writing a compiler, let alone actually written 
> one.  It's like the comments along the lines of "you can't call yourself 
> a programmer until you've mastered regular expressions".

Who makes comments like that?  As far as I can tell, I'm the resident 
regexphile on this newsgroup, and I certainly don't say that.

I find it frustrating that Pythonistas shy away from regex as much as 
they do.  Yes, Python strings have a rich set of built-in operations 
which provide easy ways to do a lot of things traditionally done with 
regexes in other languages.

Regex is a powerful tool, and programmers will improve their skill set 
by knowing how to use them.  But that's not the same as saying you can't 
be a programmer if you don't know regex.