[xoroshiro]

I'd say Python would've been the 'safe' and 'sane' choice, but maybe it's just my bias against Java and JavaScript talking.

Just curious, has anyone ever heard off choosing to teach something like bash / PowerShell? It might seem less intimidating than downloading a lot of stuff and students can play around with stuff already in their computer. Hell, maybe even something like VBA (as much we might dislike it) since non-majors will likely encounter it in MS Office anyway.

[dx034]

In the department I work, 5 people recently started using Python who never wrote a line of code before (except some limited VBA).

While the coding itself was relatively smooth, we spent a majority of our time consolidation which Python version works with which packages and how to create code that can be executed by computers that use Python 2 vs Python 3. Some people had to use packages that only worked with P2, others only worked with P3.

There's still not really a solution for this. We'll probably just switch to Julia once it gets enough support in areas we need..

So I disagree, Python is actually not a good language for beginners. The language is great but the ecosystem can be extremely frustrating.

[Doxin]

The mistake here is not just making a choice but instead having people pick at random. Hardly pythons fault, every programming language has multiple incompatible versions.

[shishy]

Could you elaborate more about why you don't like JavaScript? Asking out of curiosity -- I just started learning it yesterday, although most of my experience is with C/C++/Python/Java.

[romanovcode]

IMO Python would be 'safe', but not 'sane'.