[Zofren]

A CS education, for better or worse (in my opinion - for the better), is grounded in theory and foundational knowledge. Introductory CS classes are designed to ease people into programming, yes, but also to give a taste for concepts that they'll eventually have to become very comfortable with later on.

I don't think Python is a bad first language to learn, but I think that it's important to consider the audience of these introductory CS classes. These classes aren't really designed JUST to teach you programming (I say this as a person who never coded before CS31). This is why the UCLA Computer Science faculty recently introduced CS97, which is actually an introductory programming course taught in Python for absolute beginners. That way those who are already comfortable with coding can ease themselves into learning about lower-level implementation they may not have been exposed to before, and absolute beginners can supplement their introductory _Computer Science_ class with an introductory programing class as well.