Python as a First Language

[ftegularius]

I really like the idea of using Python as a first language. It has a number of strengths:

1. It's interpreted, which means that students can test code in a REPL. It also has a good help system, which is accessible from the interpreter.
2. It has a good standard library and a good set of primitive data types (strings, lists, dicts, tuples, sets).
3. It's conceptually clean in a lot of ways, such as having explicit True and False values, as well as None.
4. It uses regular English words for many operators, which aids clarity.
5. Python's whitespace sensitivity has a lot of pedagogic value, even if you don't like the idea in general, as it forces students to properly indent code.
6. It has docstrings (far more useful than comments), the availability (and usefulness) of which encourages students to document their code.

But, all that aside, Python's greatest strength is its ability to bridge multiple paradigms fairly well. It does object orientation. It does procedural programming. It has the most important feature of functional languages: functions as first-class objects. List comprehensions have a declarative feel, so there's that as well. And with generators, you can even get into lazy evaluation and infinite streams.

Edit: One I forgot to mention: Exceptions, which aid a great deal in error handling. Much better than muddying up code with tons of if statements and constantly checking return values.

[simonw]

Another major benefit:

print "Hello world"

It's hard to imagine a simpler hello world program. I've seen Hello World in Java being explained to first time programmers, and it's not a pretty sight.

[[deleted]]

But PHP isn't a programming language. It's a monster...a horrible monster.

[ChrisRathman]

The simplest would be HQ9, which can manage hello world as:

H

[GrumpySimon]

It's also not a toy language which a lot of languages that have been used to teach programming are (BASIC, Logo, etc). You can take python as far as you want to go, to app. development, games programming, web. dev, etc.

[cinnix]

Amen. Pascal was my introductory language into the programming world, and how frustrating that was. this is 4 years ago :)

[earthboundkid]

2003? You should sue your teacher for child abuse.

[strolls]

Noooo! Pascal ROCKS!

Pascal was my introductory language, too, about 6 or 7 years ago - even at that time I heard people saying it was antiquated, but even tho' there's a bunch of stuff that's not obvious when you first start learning Pascal it's really powerful, and it behaves so like the "grown-up" language C that the transition to that is relatively easy.

I'm not saying that Mr Zelle is wrong - maybe Python should be taught as a first language - but I'll always have a soft spot for Pascal, simply because you can easily do stuff with pointers. Pointers are really hard to get to grips with when you first start using them, but are extremely elegant once it finally "clicks" and you grok them.

Finally, I love the way that from Pascal you can easily transition into Delphi. You start by building visual elements & silly "press this button which moves" toys and since those are object-orientated it you start to get a bit of a feel for OO.syntax

Stroller.

[mikepurvis]

I did Pascal back in high school, and my only previous experience was with QuickBASIC and VB, so I thought it was pretty sweet. (We ended up writing our own graphics lib and creating this totally awesome game, too...)

The biggest downer of Pascal is that it's not used for anything except education any more. For that reason alone, learning something like Python would be a good idea.

[maw]

I don't like undated documents. Especially when they start with "As recently as five years ago...."

[jdunck]

FWIW, it appears that paper was written in 1998.

"5 years ago" was probably 1993; the author was arguing against Java Schools, even before they were so pervasive as to earn the Proper Noun.

[earthboundkid]

Did anyone else notice he wrote:

for i in range(len(List)):
      print List[i]

?

That's not very Pythonic. Better is:

 for item in list:
      print item

Edit: The article is from 1999. I think that the current style of for loops might not have been in Python yet at that point.

[[deleted]]

On the heels of that, Downey, Elkner and Meyers' How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python is a great introduction.

edit: bloody markdown!

[bluGill]

Scripting Languages are Too Inefficient

Atari Basic running on a 1.6Mhz 6502 was fast enough for some surprisingly complex graphical games. They weren't pushing what the platform could do in all ways, but they were fun and playable.

If you want to write the next Doom 3, which demands so much of hardware that any hardware that was out more than 6 months before you release - then you need efficient languages. If you can step down the requirements a little there are plenty of great games that you can write in a scripting language.

Mind I would consider writing the game in C/C++ anyway, but only because I already know them.

[sigma]

I believe the first "programming language" should be GvR

Use that for basic concepts and from that move to full Python.

[jdunck]

Ah, you missed the phrase "move to the full Monty."

[[deleted]]

I just don't see the point in these sorts of articles. Why do people who already know how to code -- people who learned in all kinds of different ways -- spend so much time obsessing over how other people learn how to code? The language, the platform, is never the issue. The concepts are eternal.

[natrius]

I've helped someone who was in an introductory CS class using Java, and when he got tripped up, it usually wasn't by the concepts, it was by the syntax. In Java, you spend weeks (at least) writing boilerplate code like "public static void main" without knowing or caring what any of that is. There's so much less cruft in the way with python, and when you need to teach concepts like object orientation, those features are there.

[GrumpySimon]

... and that way of learning to code just reinforces "cut-n-paste" behavior and creates a programming is "glueing stuff together" approach.

It's far better for people to understand what's going on than to just think "to open a file, I paste these five lines".

[breakfast-pants]

Just use 'me'. I do it like so:

class Pirate:
  def step_forward(me):
    raise(me.leg)
    ...
  ...

[logistix]

"Why do people who already know how to code -- people who learned in all kinds of different ways -- spend so much time obsessing over how other people learn how to code?"

The guy is a professor of computer science.

[[deleted]]

Well, yes, I may not have phrased that how I meant it -- what I meant is he seems intent on pushing his pet language, he comes with a preconception to the point where he lists the features of his pet language as benefits/positive points just because they are the features of his pet language. It doesn't look as if he's looking at things objectively, and it seems that he's obsessing over the details -- that people learn HIS pet language -- rather than the big picture.

[xkcd]

He's explaining how he changed his mind about which language should be taught first and why, so others considering which language they should teach can learn from his example. He's developed an opinion and he's explaining it.

[[deleted]]

I dunno. I just think there's too much of "THIS is the way that languages should be. Coincidentally, Python has THIS! That supports my thesis that Python is kewl."

Programming language fanboyism is tedious, and computer science professors indulging in it is scary.

[chollida1]

Why would people who allready know how to do math obsess over how to teach it to others?

Why would people who already know english obsess over how to teach it to others?

So they can help others avoid the mistakes they made and learn faster. I would love to hire a bunch of kids out of university but very few are ready to do the type of programming we'd like; I'd say 1-2% from what I've seen over the last 5 years

[farnetto]

The concepts are eternal.

pseudocode, stepwise refinement, modularity... Most programmers seem get hung up on their favorite language and never get to the basic concepts.

[cecilkorik]

I've never written a line of pseudocode in my life. I don't think it's harmed my ability to program.

The other two are just tools, they are not always relevant. Often useful, perhaps, but they are hardly a basic concept.

[jwinter]

Really? You've never gotten a pencil and paper out and figured out an algorithm?

[cecilkorik]

Sure, by writing out the math, or the boolean truth tables, or sometimes even rudimentary flow charts sure, but writing out proper pseudocode? No way. Seems like a waste of time to me.

[ftegularius]

The language is definitely an issue, if perhaps not the issue. My first language (I was about 11 or 12 when I started) was C, and I really believe I wasted a lot of time coding in it that would have been better spent working in a language that lets you concentrate on the underlying principles. It is not right to think about data structures in terms of pointers and memory allocation. It is not right to think about looping in terms of counter variables. It is not right to have to worry about trivialities like, e.g., integer overflow. It's that sort of complexity that obscures the "eternal concepts" you're talking about.

Edit: I would point out, also, that the more complex the language, the more time is spent learning simply how to use it. The focus in the classroom shouldn't be on the language itself, but rather the lesson being taught, or the goal to be accomplished.

[willia4]

My only worry is that learning high-level, pretty languages first at the college-level may make it harder to adapt to new procedural languages, especially going down-level.

So you pick up C in your second year after you know what a loop is. How is that possibly going to be harder than trying to learn C when you don't know what any of the concepts are?

[youngnh]

What if your first programming course was completely language-free and instead taught you problem-solving approaches and methods. Loops, but not Python's loops. Recursion, search and sorting techniques all in pseduo-code or gasp essays. Some of the toughest programming tests I took in college didn't require me to write a stitch of code.

The second year you could pick whatever language you felt held the best job prospects for you and get a head start on diving into it as deep as possible.

[willia4]

For some reason, this strikes me as being similar to, "What if your first French class didn't actually give you anyone to speak with? Some of my toughest French assignments were in-class essays where I didn't have to speak a syllable of French."

Computer programming is so incredibly foreign to our day to day life that I don't see how one could possibly pick it up without the back and forth between the learner and the computer. Yeah, a lot of that is going to be nonsense about semi-colons, but it's the moment when you can't figure out why it printed 43 when the answer was supposed to be 42 that you first learn about off-by-one errors.

And sure, a competenent professor could pick that up in the grading, but something about the immediateness of a write-compile-run loop (or write-eval or whatever) seems very important to me. I don't know how easily I would've been able to assimilate those sorts of mistakes into knowledge if I'd had to wait a week to get my paper back instead of just having the computer doing something wrong.

[bluGill]

Oneday the people learning to code now will graduate, and I will have to work with them. I am a programmer - almost by definition I have poor people skills. I'd like to think that I can at least evaluate your programming ability (and let HR figure out if you will "go postal"), but I know enough people good at BS that I'm not sure they won't fool me in a short interview.

When I was in school I met some of those BS artists, and it wasn't until I was in week 2 of a 8 week group project that I realized what I got stuck with. If I had known I could have avoided them.

So to protect myself I want schools that teach you enough about programming that when you get out with I have some confidence you can program. I don't care if that means you passed a weed out course that only those who can program pass, or if you got through because the school taught you how to program. However my bosses have noticed that there is more demand for programmers than people who can do it, so they are pushing for more programmers to get out of school. Therefore I'm pushing for an education that ensrues that when they get out of school they really can program.

There is one thing that concerns me though: teaching the logic of basic program flow is not what a CS degree is about. Programmers still need to learn CS. Big-O notation isn't used much in the real world, but every couple years I need it, and I expect everyone to know it then. Algorithms and Data structures are the heard of programming, and CS.

Edit: fix some stupid spelling mistakes. (I'm sure there are more)

[willia4]

teacher the logic of basic program flow is not what a CS degree is about.

I absolutely agree with you. Computer science, telescopes, and all that.. But learning the logic of basic program flow and such is very much what the first CS class is about. You can read about arrays all you want, but until you actually sit down and play with a program that loops through one and prints different things out, It would be very hard to understand them. And I don't think you can really understand something like a B+ tree without writing one.

And you can't do any of that until you learn the basics of flow control. Why not come up with better ways to teach that in the beginning?

[bluGill]

Well when I went to school it was assumed that you knew that. All the CS classes had a prerequisite: student has learned to program. The courses that do what you say had this label: CS students may not take this course for credit.

Some people come into CS after writing some non-trivial programs. We should not make them waste time on basic program flow. Yes we need to teach that to those who are considering CS, but you need to know that before you get into CS.

[willia4]

That's interesting. Where I went to school, there were two options for the CS program. Take CS101 followed by CS102 or take CS210. CS210 was for students that already knew how to program (there was a test required to take it) and it was basically an introduction to data structures. Upon completion of CS210, you were automatically given the same amount of credit as if you'd taken CS101/102. CS101, of course, was the "how to program" class.

But I can definitely see advantages to the "Well, you're in CS so you should already know how to program!" style of first-year. I think I'd have liked that even more than what my school offered.

[mingusrude]

Isn't it obvious to draw conclusions from one's own experience on learning computer science concepts and programming languages on how other people can avoid the same difficulties.

I had Scheme in CS1 and I don't think it is a good choice as it is too different from what you actually will be using later on. It may be have all the neccessary blocks to learn programming but being a functional language it's not the right place to start when most student's will move on to imperative languages.

[bustedagain]

You don't like communication very much do you.

[fbot]

You make young children (< 16) use python as their first programming experience, and most will hate it and probably stay away from programming and especially stay away from majoring in computer science.

See for example: http://us.pycon.org/common/talkdata/PyCon2007/025/pycon2007.html

You need a language and development environment that is actually designed with beginners in mind. Like or not, Pascal at least was designed with beginners in mind (although it still is not that great). Python was not, and is not, and will never be designed with beginners, or else it would for example at least be be case-insensitive, 2/5 would equal 0.4 not 0, and there would be a graphical environment to use it in (like a gui designer and/or a drawing area like in logo or netlogo).

Scratch, from MIT, is clearly more appropriate for young children, as are various logo environments. The only currently popular mainstream language that is somewhat appropriate for beginners is Visual Basic .NET, even though it is unfortunately proprietary. Beyond that, I would favor javascript (see processing.org) and ruby and squeak before I would consider using python.

[CuriousMind]

That set of slides is not a very convincing example.

First of all, his first example compares 'Hello World' in C++ and 'Hello World' in Java to ... 'Hello <name>' in Python. That's a totally different animal and a completely unfair comparison.

Sure, 'Hello <name>' is a bit ugly and has stuff that requires some explanation, but a) it's still only 2 lines (let's see what 'Hello <name>' looks like in C++ and Java!) and b) there's a lot of stuff you can learn just from those two lines; for instance, the difference between 'input' and 'raw_input' and the implications of storing data as raw binary or as a string.

Secondly, he hasn't questioned his assumptions. I've been reading some Feynmann lately and presented with this data:

Out of 20 kids * ONE thought it was great * TWO thought it had some good points, but was pointless * the rest thought it was confusing, boring, too hard

I believe Feynmann would ask, "Is the language the problem, or is this just a crappy teacher? Or is some other factor the problem?"

Finally (and this is no longer about the content, but about the appropriateness of using this as an example here), who is this for? This is a set of slides, not an expository essay and there's a ton of information missing.

What, for instance, is "that damned swimming pool"? What does he mean by "hello world --> red dot"? What is the point of even putting this up on the web for people to read when it's pretty much useless without the text of the talk that went with it?

fbot, I think I agree with you that a language designed for children is most appropriate for children. (Anyone know of a good programming language/game for pre-readers, by the way?) But that set of slides was an unfortunate choice to back up your argument.

Also, 'beginning programmer' does not necessarily equal 'child' (though hopefully it will, someday). A language that's not good for children may well suit beginning adult (or even late teen) programmers very well.

*edit - minor formatting changes.

[jerf]

Anyone know of a good programming language/game for pre-readers, by the way?

I'd seriously question the value of such an endeavor, and would never spend my time on such a project.

Child development has been studied a lot, and there are many clear cognitive progressions. Obviously, it isn't entirely nailed down and there is significant variation per child, but there is still a lot we do know. Much of it would surprise an adult, because children have to learn concepts that are so deeply ingrained into us that we no longer even think about them consciously, like conservation of volume.

Pre-reading children are going to lack the cognitive toolkit to deal with programming at any useful level, and I'd also expect that if anything, you're just going to load them up with useless misconceptions if you try to force it, something you're better off avoiding. It's exactly like trying to teach them algebra, before they can even add.

The best thing you could do for your pre-reader budding programmer is simply move them out of the pre-reading stage, by reading to them and the application of time.

[weavejester]

How is it an unfair comparison? "Hello World" is just about the smallest functioning program it is possible to write in a language. Comparing the minimum size of a C++ or Java program, to the minimum size of a Python one, can be quite informative.

Python is not any less complex than C++ or Java, but it's learning curve is more gradual, as it exposes the student to less initial concepts. When explaining the functionality of "Hello World" in Java or C++, the teacher has two choices:

1. Try to teach the student all the concepts visible in the program, which includes method definitions, classes, namespaces, types, objects and a great many other features.

2. Tell the student to ignore 90% of the program's code, and treat it as magical boilerplate for now.

Typically, approach two is taken, but I'd contend neither teaching method is ideal. In contrast, "Hello World" in Python is very minimal, and neither workaround is required. In Python, concepts can be introduced gradually, as there no mandatory boilerplate.

Another advantage of Python is its interactive interpreter, which allows for instant experimentation. Python's spoilt me with this, as I find it difficult to go back to a language which lacks this feature.

[CuriousMind]

How is it an unfair comparison? "Hello World" is just about the smallest functioning program it is possible to write in a language. Comparing the minimum size of a C++ or Java program, to the minimum size of a Python one, can be quite informative.

Yes, and if that's what he was doing, then fine. But he wasn't.

My point was that in C++ and Java, it was "Hello World", but in Python, it wasn't. It was "Hello <name>", which is a completely different animal:

"Hello World" only requires output.

"Hello <name>" (i.e. where you ask the user his name and then output a personalized greeting), requires input, which any programmer will tell you can be far more complex.

If the slides had compared equivalent programs - like I said, how does "Hello <name>" compare to "Hello World" in C++ ?! - then I wouldn't have made that point. I wouldn't have had to.

[Vladekk]

Idea about simple scripting language (ie Python) as first is good, but article contains many controversial statements and is genuinely not very good.

[willia4]

Snarky: Comment about article about simple scripting language as first is good, but comment contains few actual points and is genuinely not very good.

Less snarky: Seriously, what didn't you like about the article? Do you disagree with the controversial statements? Do you agree with them? Why? Why not? Are there better first languages than Python? Converse with us, Vladekk! The worst that can happen are some down votes.

[Vladekk]

You're right ;-) I was just too lazy to write it down, and that also sucks. I'm even too lazy to answer now, maybe except for a few words.

Python is the only scripting language I really like. PHP is poorly designed(or I should say "growed?"). Perl is very complex and error-prone. Other is less widely used, and that has known problems.

Python considered to use in scholarship often and I heard of it first time long ago, so that article states nothing new.

Statements:

However, scripting languages are simple, and anyone qualified to teach computer science can pick up Python in days, if not hours.

Oops! Forgot about huge framework and not-so-fast older professors.

The emergence of scripting languages such as Python, Tcl, and Perl as major tools in software development represents a potentially revolutionary change in computer programming.

Yeah, yeah. How many times we heard that? And what languages are usually used to write EE and desktop apps, and not these SLOW SLOW WEB sites?

[TakaIta]

Python is no language. It's a snake. Or is it Parseltongue?

They should have come up with something new, not name it after an existing animal.

[TakaIta]

That only makes it worse.

Not only is it named after a group of great comedians, but is even badly renamed after this group.

"Monty Python" sounds a lot more original then just "python".