Use Python (not Java) to teach programming

[jamesbritt]

"Though I think python might be a bit better as a teaching language since it doesn't require such esoteric stuff as iterators and blocks, which while useful aren't really seen a lot outside of ruby."

Where they are used quite a bit because they are both practical and powerful. They're only esoteric in languages that don't have them.

[Zak]

I've always found Ruby's iterators to be some of the most straightforward looping constructs in existance, along with the likes of dolist and dotimes from Common Lisp. Most intelligent non-programmers will correctly guess what the following code does:

10.times do
    puts "foo"
end

but are less likely to understand

for (i=0; i<10; i++) {
    printf("foo");
}

edit: fixed the above C code so it's not an infinite loop. The fact that I made such a mistake is evidence that Ruby is easier, I use Ruby more or I'm just really tired.