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Comment by biggerChris | Hacker News Reader

I’m all in support for having everything in one text editor for embedded devices. Python is a human language; it’s not going to teach kids anything, anyone can code in python overnight. Python has taught kids to code in the less efficient ways possible.

But, arduino and jeroo.org should really make C language more inviting to children.

Without jeroo and arduino, I wouldn’t be familiar with C language.

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At this point I think it is unnecessary or even harmful to teach young people C. The language is needlessly complicated. Not to mention Arduino C is somewhat different from regular C in some weird ways

I couldn't agree more.

Getting kids involved in software in general is still a massive challenge. I would rather have a world where 1 in 100 kids knows how to write mediocre Python and 1 and 10,000 kids knows how to write good C than 1 in 1000 of both.

C is a simple language in theory. But memory management is not something that I would consider approachable to most children.

This is the best approach in my mind too. Getting kids in through the front door is very difficult. It takes a very particular mindset to believe the best place to start kids programming today would be to start with C.

The same arguments used to be made about learning BASIC first and how it would ruin future programmers.

Somehow we managed to dive into Z80 and 6502 Assembly after getting our bases covered with BASIC, at the age of 10 years old.

I bet kids these days will do alright with MicroPython and they can even dive into inline Assembly with it.

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