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Comment by ashnehete | Hacker News Reader

I agree. Although JS is a powerful language, it is not suitable to teach in an introductory environment. How about C? It makes the student grasps not only logical constructs but also introduce a portion of computer organisation and architecture.

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I've taught introductory programming to undergraduates in both C and Python at different times. In my experience students struggle to grasp computer architecture and memory management at the same time as learning to think like a computer and formulate ideas in code. They have coped much better with Python and enjoyed how time/effort is spent solving useful problems rather than boilerplate.

Ideally they would all learn about computer architecture and memory management at some point. But at least with this course motivation and interest is a big problem, and producing confident Python programmers seems a better result than terrified students who can't produce competent C.

I would also go with C first. It takes the magic out of the computer and you understand what's going on under the hood.

The Stanford curriculum goes from Java to C++ to C in the first core year of classes.

Our final project is a memory Allocator (Malloc, Realloc, Free). By the end, students really do grasp computer organization and architecture.

Mumbai University curriculum goes from C to Java (actually its more of Object Oriented Methodology) and then we have a separate subject for Computer Organisation and Architecture. This is in 3 contiguous semesters. By the end, we know from low-level to high-level.

Funny--I learned in pretty much the opposite order: Assembly -> C -> C++ -> Java. Seems odd to go top-down but who's to say which way is better..

JS is a powerful language for a narrow domain. That makes it totally unsuitable as an introductory language because if the domain you wish to move to is not web development you now have to restart all over again with another language. Python would be better, java wasn't all that bad as a universal language it is applicable to many domains. But the ECT cycle of java could be seen as a drawback, python would remedy that to get the instant gratification factor.

I'm no lover of JavaScript -- especially without TypeScript -- but JS is the most universal language. There are frameworks to create server side components, Android apps, iOS apps and windows app

Not that JS is optimal for any of those use cases.

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