[spyrosg]

I do not see Python as the natural choice for a first language. I've even had adult colleagues squint when I tried to explain decorators, or objects and all the self/static/class/method binding nonsense.

OOP in Python is something I really cannot like. I teach the language to children and as soon as I get to objects (which is not avoidable in Python, as many libraries and the language itself use objects) the number of concepts I have to explain is too much and I get the dreaded blank stare. I haven't so far found a short explanation that gives them a good enough grasp on objects that they can start making their own.

Ideally I would like to have to explain few orthogonal concepts, as learning a new concept in the abstract is hard and their mind has little patience for it, and let them experiment as soon as possible. But experimentation needs the minimum mastery required to combine the concepts and get some result. Pyhton's objects tend to expose their functions+struct guts, which does not help.

And don't get me started on warts like the "global" keyword, which makes simple scripts with global state and a few functions (a step into learning functions and structured programming) a frustrating and buggy process. I still cannot understand async/await enough to be comfortable with it, and if Armin Ronacher doesn't either... Meanwhile, languages like Oz do concurrency, with actual parallelism, beautifully.

I'm starting to think Scheme and Smalltalk would be excellent beginner languages. "Here's how to make an s-expr; these s-expr are applications, these are definitions. Now go."

[danpalmer]

I disagree, I think Python is an excellent first language. While there are many oddities, I think Python lets you ignore them, or defer them to later in the learning process. Python can be pretty much as simple as you need it to be, and I think that's important for teaching programming.

I would not expect to get to objects _properly_ (maybe things like list()) in an introduction to programming course, I think you can get very far with just functions and simple data types.

Then, once you do want to introduce objects, I think Python's class system can be kept simple enough to begin with, and the parts that are inherently tricky (like self) have equivalently tricky parts in most other languages anyway.

I think a course teaching programming that goes into async IO, needs to discuss 'global' (something I've still used only twice in 5 years of Python), talks about decorators, etc, is doing something seriously wrong.

I don't know a lot about Smalltalk, but Scheme is an interesting idea for a first language. I think it could be a good first language, but I would be concerned about what the next step is. Having learnt Python, there are lots of next steps because it has a large and active ecosystem with plenty of opportunities, I'm not sure Scheme has the same, and I feel learning a second language, while Scheme might be good preparation, is not going to be straightforward for someone who has only just learnt to code.

[lostcolony]

You can. Georgia Tech's intro to CS classes for non-engineers are both Python (the engineering one is Matlab). Objects are introduced at the end, but as a concept OO is largely deferred to the following class, in Java. GT actually used to have the intro class be in Scheme, but switched it to Python a number of years ago, which they've stayed with. I agree though, Scheme would be a good language, but the impedance mismatch to get to more popular languages would be higher (plus have students asking "who uses this?!" Being able to reply "Google" tends to satisfy that question pretty well)

When I was there, at least, the focus was on basic programming concepts, functions, variables, loops, recursion, conditionals, and library interaction was largely imperative, more focused on successful execution than on the organization of the code.

[throwaway0892]

I don't have my computer around, so replying with a throwawy account. Wall of text!

> While there are many oddities, I think Python lets you ignore them

Yes, thankfully. But libraries that will make programming interesting for children usually have a rather sophisticated design, including an object-oriented interface. Pygame is slightly too complex for my taste and installing it on Windows is a pain (not Python's fault). I've tried Pyglet on that platform, despite its hard API, and am I right now comparing two students, one on each framework (although the Pygame one uses pgrun).

Once they've used Python as a means to get a game displayed, it seems easier to teach Python's useful minutiae as it helps them code. Not enough experience to assert this with certainty though.

> Then, once you do want to introduce objects, I think Python's class system can be kept simple enough to begin with, and the parts that are inherently tricky (like self) have equivalently tricky parts in most other languages anyway.

Python's OOP really has more complexity than needed. Smalltalk does objects simpler. Alan Kay used it to teach programming to children (the seventies version, the public '82 version had more stuff, meant for adults.) Children can learn to program _starting_ with OOP, not structured programming, but Python (or Java, or...) will not help you there. It seems to expect its user to understand OOP in terms of structured programming, which a practicing programmer certainly can, but a child with limited abstract thought?

Interestingly, Alan Kay was a lisper, which brings me to...

> I don't know a lot about Smalltalk, but Scheme is an interesting idea for a first language.

Can't be sure without trying it, but probably. The scheme community has projects in teaching CS through game programming, with at least one scheme dialect for games and accompanying IDE where images are first-class objects, displayed in the code.

> I think a course teaching programming that goes into async IO, needs to discuss 'global' (something I've still used only twice in 5 years of Python), talks about decorators, etc, is doing something seriously wrong.

I can see how it came out that way, but I don't teach async IO to children; I try to teach some Python to colleagues from time to time.

As for 'global', was your programming activity the one of a beginner? When you have someone that successfully wrote a single script with variables and control structures, you will want them to start writing functions to complete the introduction to structured programming. You will want to make them reuse the existing state, and once they discover the limitations of it, slowly introduce local variables, scoping rules and so on. My students often have the right reasoning at this stage but forget 'global', _repeatedly_ (that's the important part -- hint of a bad UI), which means I have to explain scoping rules, which seem to them like unnecessary wanking at this point.

Guido's attention to newbie-friendliness is obvious, but Python is old and has accumulated cruft, and its developers have blind spots. Zed Shaw listed some of them. Also don't forget that a professional in IT has developed a thick skin when it comes to complexity, or less charitably, learned helplessness in the face of shitty design. Where we think a system's idiosyncrasies are mere details (or worse, the right way to do things), an innocent mind will refuse to engage.

[aninhumer]

If you're trying to teach someone OOP with their first language, I think you're doing it wrong. If someone is new to programming, it's far more important that people get an understanding of simple procedural logic first. Anything that gets in the way of that is just likely to put people off.

I don't think Python is a great language longer term, but its simple syntax and lack of ceremony makes it pretty much ideal for beginners.

[throwaway0892]

Alan Kay would disagree, and he's got some experience teaching programming to children. See my answer to your post's sibling.

Why is it far more important that people get an understanding of simple procedural logic first? (And what is it exactly? I've had a 'procedural' feeling when seeing: - assembly code - structured programming (Algol 60 and descendants) - even some kinds of logic programming)