First programming language to be taught - C or Python?

Question

I know that there is a long debate regarding this matter. I also understand that this is strictly not a programming question. But I am asking here as this platform contains wide range of experts from different realms.

When we got admitted in a Computer Science and Engineering(CSE) course in university, we were first taught C. The course was actually structured programming language but we used C as the language. And on next semester we were taught C++ and Java as OOP. Recently I have heard that the department is going to introduce Python as the first language. I strongly oppose the idea for the following reasons:

1. Python is a super high language. In the first course the students should become familiar with the basics of programming concepts like data type, pointer, by value or by reference etc. You can write lots of things in Python without understanding these in details.

2. Python has a wide range of build in data structures and library. In first language students should become familiar with basic algorithms like sorting or searching. I know there is sorting library in C too, but that is not as widely used as Python's sorting methods.

3. Python is OOP. How can you teach someone OOP when (s)he does not have the basic knowledge of structured programming. If Python is the first language, then they might not differ OOP with non-OOP concepts.

4. Memory is crucial. If you allocate, then you need to release the memory. These concepts are not necessary with a language with garbage collector.

So what is your opinion? What do you prefer as the first teaching language?

Please don't start a flamewar or something similar. Whatever you suggests, please explain why you think so. And also please keep in mind that the course is for university level. It's not for kids and so trying to make things simple is not much helpful.

And also I know that Python is a great language. I am personally a fan of it. But the question is whether Python should be first teaching language instead of C.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT :

1. When I asked this, I was not aware about programmers.stackexchange.com. It can be moved there if that is better.

2. The question contains my opinion. That does not mean I don't wanna hear others. In fact that is exactly what I want. Please don't get me wrong. I am not designing the curriculum. So my opinion has no effect on it. The thing is I think this and this, and I want to hear what others think.

3. I am well aware that this is not a question in that sense. My first para tells that.

Answer 1

Bottom-up learning is often considered the "better" way to learn. Start from first principles and make your way up to more advanced ideas. The problem with this approach is that much of what we humans learn in life doesn't follow that model at all. Children, in fact, are the fastest learners and they do so by pattern-matching, extrapolation, interpolation, etc., all of which would be thoroughly frowned upon by anyone promoting the classical bottom up system. And yet somehow they run rings around adults in learning, say, the language in a new country, not by reading the bottom-up text books faster than the grown-ups, but by talking to other kids.

I don't know whether Python is the best language to use, but I do believe that any language that gets people writing code and solving interesting problems quickly can't be too bad a choice.

Answer 2

Since you say it yourself

In the first course the students should become familiar with the basics of programming concepts like data type, pointer, by value or by reference etc. You can write lots of things in Python without understanding these in details.

C looks logical.

However, starting with Python will add concepts like functional programming into the students toolbox. They'll be able to handles concepts like map-reduce, or sharding, or parallel-processing much more easily than their peers...

I've been taught C, then C++, and today i must say that understanding functional programming is a bit hard since i think in these languages' patterns.

If you've got a say in the process, perhaps C should be taught for basics like memory management and pointers, but i'd recommend ditching it for Python as soon as the basic concepts are taught

Answer 3

In my opinion, C is better to start. It might be more frustrating than Python in the beginning, and you need more time to achieve the same end results, but in change, you teach them much more than just a programming language if you do it well and in detail.

Answer 4

As a C++ programmer, I would have to agree with your points. C teaches the concepts of programming languages that get closer to the nuts and bolts of how computers operate, with datatypes, memory management, ect.. On the other hand, python is alot easier to use, and may actually be effective as the first step, and it may make learning C easier (familiarity) or harder (datatypes?!?! whats that?)

I'd teach C first.

Answer 5

Definitely C for the sole reason that it is a compiled language. Python moves a huge amount of errors into runtime. That is something unacceptable for the first language.

Our University recently dropped Pascal (which had even better compile checking then C) in favor of C for the programming introduction course. This choice was done because Pascal language syntax is something rarely seen elsewhere. Most used language have C-style syntax.

Answer 6

In the first course the students should become familiar with the basics of programming concepts like data type, pointer, by value or by reference etc.

Mostly False. "data type" is True. The rest is not a basic of "programming". It's a basic of C.

You can write lots of things in Python without understanding these in details.

False. You need to know "data type". The rest (pointer, by value or by reference) is about C. Not programming.

In first language students should become familiar with basic algorithms like sorting or searching.

True

How can you teach someone OOP when (s)he does not have the basic knowledge of structured programming.

Easily. More easily than procedural programming.

If Python is the first language, then they might not differ OOP with non-OOP concepts.

False. Indeed, it doesn't make much sense. When you learn SQL, you learn non-OOP concepts just fine. No problems.

If you allocate, then you need to release the memory. These concepts are not necessary with a language with garbage collector.

Correct. But completely irrelevant. Everyone learns how objects are automatically created and removed in Python. It's easier to teach that than it is to teach C-language memory management.

Everyone gets C-language memory management wrong -- often for years. It's very, very hard to debug memory allocation problems. So much so that many folks give up on C because they can't understand how pointers work. Pointers and memory management isn't "essential". It's a bad hack.

Python's reference counting is easiest to teach and always works.

Since a few of your assumptions are wrong, what's the point of this "question"?

Answer 7

As I already say there my feeling is that Python is far more acceptable as a first language. It implies lot less things to explain to start.

Answer 8

In the first course the students should become familiar with the basics of programming concepts like data type, pointer, by value or by reference etc

Why? You just state this without any justification. These are not necessarily fundamentals of programming, they are just fundamentals of programming in C. If you don't learn C, there's no reason to learn this.

Now, it's true that for advanced programming you will need to learn this. But you don't give any reason why it should be required for beginners.

Memory is crucial. If you allocate, then you need to release the memory. These concepts are not necessary with a language with garbage collector.

Again, why? Because C does it that way. But most of the other languages that they are likely to come into contact with allocate and release memory automatically, whether by reference counting or garbage collection. Doing it manually is simply not required for a beginner.

Like most people, I got started in programming through a language with no pointers and no memory allocation. In my case it was BASIC (Sinclair Spectrum version, since you ask), but these days a lot of people begin with dynamic languages like Python or Javascript. I certainly don't think I'm a worse programmer because I learned about pointers and malloc later rather than sooner.

Answer 9

Neither!

I think students should be taught Scheme or Lisp first. (Not Common Lisp, tail recursion, CLOS and what not. Just plain Lisp.) This will give an understanding of lambda calculus (no need even to mention explicitly that is what the students are doing.)

Lisp is math. Python is math plus a lot of clever pragmatic tools and libraries, with a sprinkle of peculiar white space handling. :-)

Math (Lisp kind of math, not trigonometry) is the most important thing to learn for a programmer. Then, when the students know about data structures in their purest form, recursion (which is neither an ugly word nor, which some people seem to believe, hard) they can learn C.

This will have the double benefit of not locking thought - mistaking the machine and the peculiarity of a specific machine or pointer model for the essence of programming, while still giving a deep understanding of both.

A perfect exercise for such a C class it to write a Lisp interpreter. You know, a really small one. For that extra aha moment the professor should make damn sure that all Lisp examples and code from the first Lisp class will execute in the Lisp interpreter the students write themselves.

This is not hard! It's just the order in which things should be taught.

We did much bigger C projects in school without most of us thinking it was too much ask.

In such a curriculum I propose, of course Python could be made to serve the role I propose for Lisp. But I fear all of Pythons features, libraries, rich syntax, classes, runtime, exceptions and so on may take away focus from what is the essence of programming.

Answer 10

I got taught C although they originally said that it was C++. My feeling is that you should teach bottom up, get the basic principles of logic and looping.

Then following on from this you should learn about OO, it took a week or two for the penny to drop with OO after learning C & the procedural way of programming.

For me personally OO after procedural way of programming opens your eyes to the power of OO.

As a developer you can then choose which way is right for your situation.

It also helps for when you are interviewing people - I have seen people claim they are OO developers and yet still write procedural code.

Answer 11

In my view (as an interested amateur) is that the first language should be a simple one where you can deal with the basic idea of breaking down a problem into steps, flow control, logic etc. This should be followed fairly quickly by learning a low-level language which forces you to learn wha is going on under the hood - what is actually happening to perform your algorithm. This would include all the things like memory addressing, pointers etc. After that any modern high-level language can be learnt in a useful way.

I started with various forms of basic (back in the day), followed by having great fun with assembler, c and c++. Although pretty much everything I do now is in python, it is great to have a bit of an understanding of what has to go on beneath the hood to acheive what I'm asking.

One of my friends is studying computer science and their starting language was Haskell. This seemed crazy - it might be a good language but it is so abstracted that it gave no understanding of what the computer is actually doing and therefore no suggestion of what was easy to calculate and what was crazily complex.

Answer 12

The main thing about learning anything is to have fun and a sense of accomplishment.

I don't think a programming course should necessarily start with a programming language.

E.g. doing web pages in a text editor is great for learning about text and formal languages.

Answer 13

As a C++ programmer, I remember I have completely fallen into computer science only when I learnt C++. This was the language I wanted, well-organized, at the time I wanted - though I would have prefered learn it before (but everyone one around me was repeating it is difficult, hard to read blah blah blah)

Had I stayed stuck to the first languages I had learnt: BASIC, asm, Turbo Pascal or C... Then I would have simply given up computer sciences : They are too limited, syntacticly ugly. And I really don't think they taught me anything enough, since I thought they were ugly.

As some C++ features can be pretty hard to understand, slow learning curve, maybe it is not the best choice for all beginners. Depending upon their will, their needs...

So I would go for Python with OOP, and basic concepts: loops, logical test, lists...

And don't get me wrong, I really really understood pointers almost two years after having been teached them. But I could use them blindly without really minding: they must not be NULL, and we get their content with writing mytypeValue = *pMyPointer; that's all.

Pointer algebra is not as valuable as you may think. It's really self contenting to play with memory addresses and write something proudly like int iValue = ((++pMyPointer)^0x0F) ah ah ah this is complicated and I can do great programs...

But no this is not inteligent computer science. This is ego-C-esoterism ;-)

For beginners: If not for C++, with well organized classes. Then I would go for Python, with well organized classes.

Only my point of view... of course.

Answer 14

If you want to be familiar with machine compulting internals, like address arithmetic, memory allocation, data widths it is better to learn C (or even some another 'machine close' language (even assembler).

If you are more about high level concepts, like OOP, python (or any other high level language) is choice for you.

Ofcourse you may have OOP, GC and many other HL conceps in C (GTK has them!), but it will look not so elegant like in any language implementing these natively. OTOH you may also write programs in machine-close style in python, but there's no gain.

Answer 15

I do not agree with the OP. I believe that students should be taught a higher, simple language like Python first, and then learn C.

In some ways, it is like learning to be an automobile mechanic. Although it is not required, most people learn how to drive first. When they start working on the internals of the engine, they have a better idea of why the engine works the way it does.

Many moons ago, I first learned BASIC in high school (this was before OOP even existed as a concept). In my first semester in college, I was taught structured Fortran. It was not until later courses that we were taught assembly language. At that point, I understood the concept of data structures, and learning how the libraries actually implemented them at the most fundamental level made perfect sense.

Similarly, I believe the beginning student will be better served by learning Python first. He or she will learn the uses of the data structures without having to be bogged down understanding how they work. Later, when they learn C, they will have a much better appreciation for them. Similarly, I would never advocate teaching a course in data structures before teaching an introductory language course. Imagine trying to explain how a red-black tree works when the student does not know what a subroutine does.

I have taught C as a first course and found it very difficult to get some of the more complex concepts like arrays and pointers across. I would much prefer to tell the students that this variable represents that array, without having to explain how the variable, in fact, binds to the address of the first location in the array, which happens to be on the heap.

If I were going to teach my father how to program, I would certainly not start with C :-).

My two cents...

Answer 16

In my opinion, its better to continue with C as the initial language to be thought. Python internally uses C implementation and assembly. The suggested syllabus for a junior student is

1) Assembly => Will give a real hardware platform exposure

2) C => Gives a rich idea to implement common data structure, will give a feel of using libraries. Compiling , Linking , Error fixing etc

3) OOPs => What ever be the language, a before moving to Objects oriented programming a student need to get a through idea, on the practice and patterns

4) C++ => Since the student is good with C/OOPs he can try for implementing the concepts with C++

5)Java/C#/Python etc which uses a better memory management pattern .Also being a advanced language, he can enjoy the flexibility of memory management, availability of built in data structures, libraries.. etc.

Being Python a powerful language students can take care of its benefits in scripting, Automation, Automatic test case execution etc.

It will be always a good idea to direct them to choose the technology based on the scenario rather than completely sticking to a language.

From my experience with the industry for designing applications like

Boot loader, Embedded applications go for Assembly/C

If a rich UI and less development time go for C# or any advanced languages

For using the power of plugins/Web portability go for Java

Python for automation , Creating a base COM engine etc.

C++ for a bridge between the real embedded hardware and the user interface.

Directing students in this way will be recommended..