I suggest just starting with Python, learning C at some point because it’s universal, and never learning C++ without a specific reason.
I'm grateful to have learned on a strongly typed language first, the thing about students is that sometimes they're easily demotivated, my University switched to python after teaching C first, after learning python there were a lot of student complaints asking why C was so complicated and why did they need to have static typing, and it wasn't natural to them to think about compiling as a normal step in software development.
Now take the reverse. If someone who is not motivated to learn C started out in Python, they're more likely to stay motivated, perhaps never learning strong typing. If you start them on C, they lose interest and the field loses a valuable addition.
Not everybody has to learn C or static typing or pointers. It's okay for people to have a narrow programming/comp sci scope and still enjoy the field.
Even with undefined behavior (which a newbie won't really have to care about at the beginning IMO) C is relatively simple from a flow and structural point of view. If you are saying you can do cooler things in python than C at the beginning, that's probably true, but its unclear how many people drop CS because the language they are using doesn't enable easily making cool things.
This is the confusion right here. You're underestimating what is difficult to other people.
As a friendly internet stranger with modest leadership experience, I would very gently suggest to be cautious of this pitfall. When we think like this, even if it's just coming from a place of logic, we can very easily send the wrong signal. We can make people feel stupid, and wonder why we're being critical of them.
One thing I would miss as a beginner is repl. Because, that is how I later learned bash with constant feedback and constantly tweaking the input code until the computer stops swearing at you. Also, it was really fun way to learn language, one small piece at a time. Other than that, I do not consider C to be a particularly hard language.
But, if your goal is to learn a language with modern OOP design, then you should go for python or ruby IMHO. It is much better than Java, (even to do anything you have to create a class with main with so many modifiers). I think that would the reason to learn python, because structuring the code is archaic or at least different from how other mainstream languages in C and can be a hurdle for newbie who want to scale up their programs.
I think good about python is being simple and also having features that are mainstream that translates various other mainstream languages. But, should I care about that as a newbie is an entirely different thing.
Edit : Added a comment regarding OOP
Python is strongly typed.
To an absolute beginner, however, python is not only an incredibly complex system (except for extremely trivial things), but because it goes out of its way to hide its internals, it cripples users for years before they can figure out what's actually going on under the hood.
I'm fully on the "start with c, move to python" camp. The lessons just need to not suck, which I concede may be easier to do with c ... but it should still be c.
it doesn't - python hides the unimportant aspect of the computer; namely, it abstracts the memory allocation and resource process. You treat the computer, under python, as an abstract machine which has unlimited memory, and don't worry about its use. you focus on algorithmic understanding and fundamental data structures.
Once you grasped the computer science fundamentals, then you tear open the box and learn the underlying impl. of a computer - such as memory allocation, and assembly, etc (ostensibly, by making your own operating system using C, and/or writing a compiler using C).
you can replace python with haskell, which imho, does an even better job as a first language.
Sure, sure - monads and all... I wonder if there is even a beginner programmer’s learning material that uses Haskell.
If you know these things, then you know how the computer actually works, and a lot of the mystery of C is behind you already.
Then you can start introducing stuff that’s built on top of it all like types, if statements, pointers... build the building from foundation up, don’t start on the second floor and tell the student not to go downstairs yet.
Python allows students to hit the ground running much faster. Once they learn the very basics, then it can make sense to introduce something like C, but not require them to temporarily ignore magic incantations with the promise they’ll understand them later.
Starting with C means sitting down, thinking hard and taking the time to understand how the basic model of a computer works, along with all the issues and annoiances that come with it.
Starting with python really means leaving out the details and just getting into programming and maybe one day you'll wonder ow stuff actually work underneat.
Then perhaps ASM would be an even better starting point?
One of the problems with teaching is a phase-ordering problem: what order do you teach the concepts in? As GP notes, C starts you off with a lot of boilerplate that isn't going to become relevant until a month or two down the line. Concepts like functions, libraries, the insanity that is the C preprocessor are distractions when your first challenge is just getting people to understand the mental model of how a procedural program works (i.e., understanding what x = 5 really means!). On top of that, C imposes a mental burden of understanding the stack versus the heap and the relevant memory management concerns. And then you get into C's string handling...
I suspect many of the people commenting here are in the class of people for whom programming was obvious and easy, and never struggled with any of the concepts. This class of people will do fine with any language being used to introduce the concepts, because they're not really learning the concepts. Where the language matters most is for those for whom programming is not obvious, and they need help identifying which parts of the material is more fundamental than others. Giving these people a language that is more forgiving of mistakes is going to go a longer way to democratizing CS education than insisting people start by learning how computers really work.
That isn't to say that this isn't something that should be taught pretty early on: far from it, I think a computer architecture class should be the second or third class you take on the topic. Delaying the introduction of C until computer architecture means that you can use C as a vehicle to introduce all the other parts about computers that are important, such as 2's complement arithmetic, ASCII, what the stack and heap are, etc.
While it's good that I know how those things work, I did not need to understand them to just get a basic understanding of strings, data structures, etc. For instance it wasn't that I couldn't grok linked lists, I couldn't grok pointer manipulation at the time. But that still meant my code didn't work.
Also Python has a horrific main method syntax and duck typing is ultra confusing early on.
In Python, you just use the .lower() or .upper() function.
One and done. Move onto your next problem.
In C, you hope to not trigger an array-index-out-of-bounds error, resulting in a segmentation fault. Then, not understanding what you did wrong, and then having to fire up the debugger to find your needle in the haystack.
Hours later, you’re just like, I just want to modify a string. Why is it so difficult?
Your rant should be about bad teaching of bad habits instead
Maybe it was because it was designed in the 1970s, when computers were more primitive. But better alternative languages were designed back then that didn’t have the failings of C.
But these designs permeates throughout the language. So eventually errors keep coming up.
It's the same as human learning natural languages - you have specific grammar and rules you _just_ follow, without understanding their etymology or how it evolved to be this way (and their uses).
A good lesson could start by explaining what these do by way of dissection and for the purpose of orientation, without going down the rabbit hole.
But, it is not like you have to use them, in that case why start with a complex language as a beginner anyway? It will either be too much of details or too much of magic to remember.
(Digression : in my beginner days I was using C as a glorified assembly language with control flow redirection only through, (wait for it) goto. Even after grew up to 700 lines. Only while doing a java port I got used to using methods because java does not have goto)
So, if you are going to read some code from the world you should be familiar with the archaic notations anyway. Even in frameworks, which java shops in neighborhood is mostly about, has intro docs with terms from almost 15 years ago and assumes people who read are aware of it. The thing that really bothers me (not that it is bad in an objective way) is how much old java platform has OOP encoded to its DNA. And it is great at it.
It is a language meant to be used by people who are familiar with writing such code. The FP is really enjoyable, but kind of ugly and seems retrofitted into the OOP. In general, I like opinionated crisp languages, but Java is getting away from that. In nutshell, it is disorienting for me now a days.
My brother went through a coding bootcamp that focused on Python and JS and then he started to get into Golang on his own and one day he asked me what the point of pointers is. We ended down a rabbithole that kind of blew his mind. Stack vs heap, the structure of the call stack, manual memory management, etc.
SWE's can get away without understanding many underlying concepts if they are going to be writing "business code", that is, handling strings, ints and interacting with databases and APIs.
Computer Scientists and those programming on embedded systems or designing systems/OS/theory themselves, need to delve into the math, algebra, and lower understandings of computers.
Software engineers are more likely to need to know the underlying machine and write code suitable for such - because they need to write working/production ready code. It's like applied science, vs pure research science.
C it's great to learn the barebones experience with memory, and as a lang that runs in everything.
The modern use I could see for C++ it's usually too specific for a random learner. I would only recommended for people who like to work in game engines, simulations, networking, embedded systems or migration of legacy systems, and other edge cases.
But for learning, I think it's better to learn with a modern lang, as you will be less distracted learning the quirks of vitange language, and use that time to learn in parallel a lot of concepts outside the lang, like algorithms, devops, soft skills with teams, prioritizing requirements, etc.
Found this post [0] fitting: > The best thing you can do when dealing with lower-level languages like C and C++ is understand that things like lists, strings, integers, floating point numbers, objects, etc. do not actually exist. They are simply abstractions. There are only the CPU and memory.
The computer science classic of all time (by Knuth) uses an assembly language to teach analysis of algorithms. Using Python (or Scheme, for that matter, as is done in SICP) will only take you so far. C is a good middle ground.
Sure, and that distance is far enough for 95% of developers these days. If they feel the need to go even further, they could learn C at a later time. No need to scare possible developers away right off the bat.
Not “real” assembly, a simplified one that operates directly on memory without registers.
Assembly without registers is absolutely pointless since the only thing that matters in any flavor of assembly is how to get data into registers when you need it and then remove it before you override it.
The advantage over C is having an even more limited instruction set and using descriptive names for each instruction.
SET 1 100 # Set memory[1] = 100
SET 2 500 # Set memory[2] = 500
ADD 3 1 2 # Set memory[3] = memory[1] + memory[2]
If you're going to be talking about the IP register than you need to talk about the IR register. So we should avoid talking about registers by talking about registers?
You're not selling this registerless assembly very well.
It works great with children and you don't even need a computer. You can do it all on a pen and paper.