I'm surprised I haven't seen this on planetpython yet...

...an emerging consensus in the scripting community holds that Python is the right solution for freshman programming. Ruby would also be a defensible choice.

(emphasis mine). Originally found via Lambda the Ultimate, and also passed onto me by Rich Enbody.

In other news, there are some rumors coming out of the intro CS course (CSE 231/232) here at Michigan State that the switch to Python from C++ for the first term, 231, didn't affect the students' performance in the follow-on course, 232. That is, students performed equally well on the 232 final independently of whether or not they'd had Python or C++ in 231. I had hoped for an improvement in the scores, but at least it's not a decline!

--titus

Legacy Comments

Posted by Alcides on 2008-08-20 at 15:29.

Maybe is because students that really care about programming, try
harder no matter what language is.    I also believe Python is a
language more suitable for introductory courses of programming,
specially for non-CS courses. But it happens that students don't care
about programming in general. One or two years laters they find out
that the whole course is based on programmin.

Posted by Shriphani Palakodety on 2008-08-22 at 11:05.

I think intro CS in Python is a great idea as Python looks a lot like
pseudocode, for example:    <pre>  def foo(x):    if 10 < x
< 20:    return True    else:    return False  </pre>
>>>foo(15)  True  >>>foo(5)  False    I'm at Purdue
and intro CS is taught entirely in Java like everywhere else....
depressing