So my girlfriend wants to learn to program

Question

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What programming language should be taught in Computer Science 101?

My girlfriend hates feeling completely out of the loop when my friends and I talk about anything related to computers, so she asked me to teach her how to program. I'm pretty happy she asked, but I want to be able to teach her enough to know the basics without her completely losing interest or getting too frustrated. She is a very smart girl, probably smarter than me, but her computer related skills are pretty minimal. What language should I teach her and why?

Answer 1

Python is easy to start with.

VB.NET or C# are not hard and they're good as it's really easy to design forms and such, something that might be important for someone that's getting into programming.

Answer 2

You should not teach her any language. Programmers/engineers expect too much of non-programmers, especially if the student is thought to be smart. This will cause so much relationship friction, you'll wish you hadn't. Find a good programming class and enroll her in it. Help her when she needs it, but don't try to set a curriculum or show her things you think are interesting. —signed, sad experience (three times)

Answer 3

Since you will be the one teaching her and will have to be debugging any particular problems she is having, you should really teach her in whatever language you are most comfortable in.

The language itself does not really matter as really what you will be teaching her are concepts, such as inheritance, recursion, and flow control.

If what you and your friends are normally discussing around her are the particulars to a specific language then by all means teach that, otherwise, you will find it much easier on everyone involved to teach your strongest language so that you can feel confident in debugging the issues that she will have.

Also normally that language you are strongest in is the one you know the most gotchas for, and these are as important to understand as the programming techniques.

Answer 4

My wife came to me about 3 months ago with the same sentiments.

Here's the progression we've gone through in rough order:

• The different parts of a computer and how they interact at the macro level
• The interaction between memory and the CPU
• What is binary and what are other base systems, and how do they work
• The concept of different levels of language, i.e. machine code, assembly, unmanaged high level, managed high level
• Machine code and assembly (not directly, but just conceptually)
• Basic parts of a program in C++
• concepts of variables
• concepts of functions
• conditionals
• control flow

This is with about a couple of hours a weekend of actual instruction.

That's about where we are now, and she can write basic C++ programs with standard control structures. Next week we are starting concepts of memory allocation/pointers, and heap vs. stack.

Many will say that C++ is not a good teaching language, but IMO it's just fine. The fact is that my wife wants to learn the real concepts behind programming, not just how to throw some .NET stuff together. If she were going to become a corporate programmer, then that'd be one thing, but she's just academically interested in the science of it, and for that I think C++ is ideal.

She's a high school English teacher, but she double-majored in English and Biology. She's smart, but not mathematically-oriented, and this has been both fun and challenging for her I think. Her computer literacy prior to this did not extend much past office applications, a little gaming, and a web design class she took in high school (where we met while I was a TA for a class, incidentally).

Answer 5

My suggestion would be ActionScript. It is simple and has graphics to play with. Learning curve is short, and there are a lot tutorials around.

Way interesting than hardcore languages like C++.

Answer 6

Sorry to be the one to bring this up, but it may be worthwhile doing a programming ability test, otherwise you may be wasting your time and creating frustrations.

I don't say this as a reflection on girlfriends in general, and certainly not yours, but over many years, I've come to the conclusion that there are those people who can program, and those who don't even care to try.

It's very encouraging, therefore, that she asked you to teach her. That's a very good start.

Answer 7

If she doesn't actually want to be a programmer, but just wants to understand the principles behind programming, why not go for one of the (many) languages that explicitly designed for teaching programming principles in an accurate but interesting way? Alice would be my suggestion: http://www.alice.org/

Answer 8

PHP - basics are easy to learn, it's useful for no professional programmers. I also think crating UI in HTML is much easier then classical GUI. OK, there are RAD IDEs (like Delphi, that I also recommend), but in general crating good GUI using cross platform libs isn't easy for beginners.

I don't recommend start learning with console applications. Me by you shouldn't skip consoles "hallo world" program but then You should jump as fast as possible to more advance UI.

But, as mentioned you should learn her language that you know or better ask some one else to teach here.

Answer 9

I would say there are two "languages" that are good to start with.

Python

Python is good to teach some of the basics like variables (as in algebra) and string substitution, and the beginning elements of logic (if statements, loops).

It's easy to start simple in Python, and grow the program/script from there, and print statements are sufficient to learn, as well as the Python shell.

HTML/CSS

HTML is a great way to learn how to 'speak' to a computer (that is, you tell it to bold a block of text, and it knows what you are saying). It's good to learn how style/selectors apply, and changing colors/borders/etc. on a HTML page make it easy to see get feedback of what you are learning.

Answer 10

In my opinion, I think this language would be an easy introduction to bring your girlfriend into the world of computing http://scratch.mit.edu/ also known as "Scratch". FYI, it comes very useful to beginners whom have never done programming ever.

Once she understands the basics, then you can introduce her to other languages...

For your consideration.

Answer 11

Why not something like Logo? At least she will get immediate and beautiful results and get the sense of how you control behavior by writing lines of code.

Answer 12

Don't teach her any language. She doesn't want to know how to program, she wants to understand what you do in your job. So show her the tools that you use and the fundamentals of those tools:

Start with elementary logic, boolean algebra, Karnaugh maps etc. Go through the (basic) design of a transistor as the foundation of a logic gate. Show how the decomposition of any large application design maps back onto the math covered earlier. Perhaps walk through some of the main components of a modern computer, and how it ties into the decomposition of those problems (e.g. management of large pieces of data in memory).

Answer 13

If you're willing to deal with a language in pre-1.0 state, Small Basic might not be too bad a choice. It has some basic .NET structures with very simple VB-like syntax. It can also do rudimentary graphics and formatting if such things would help.

MSDN DevLabs Small Basic

Answer 14

You should teach her JavaScript, because

• it is the most widely used on the planet, with myriads of examples at hand on the web
• it is interpreted, you just need a browser to run it and the browser is already installed on your computer
• it is often used to manipulate visuals in a web page which is more appealing than studying the output of a program in a console

Answer 15

Find a project for her to build. It can be a website, or Skynet, doesn't much matter.

Pick the language based on the project. JavaScript/JQuery might be useful for some; C#/Java for others; C/C++ for another group; Python and Perl for whoever's left.

Answer 16

Personally I would start with XHTML + CSS, as it is very simple to get a visual result. Then move into a bit of javascript for some interaction. Possibly after introduce her to a server side language, or whatever you know best. Think javascript is a easy language to learn with. and there are many javascript debugger's. Plus you won't need compliers or any complex software