> I'm particularly interested to know if anyone can share experience of > switching to teaching Python as a first programming language in a > similar context. A written up case study that I could circulate among > the relevant staff would be especially useful.
Just one experience from the "other" (student's) side. When I started to study engineering science in 1991, Pascal was the "first language" at the university in question (there were no programming classes at highschool over here at that time yet). The class was quite motivating and taught me some essential basics, I think. Although issues such as object-orientation or event-based (GUI) programming were not even mentioned, which is something that I'm desperately missing today. When I went to a different university (in 1993), still in engineering science, they used C as the "first language" in the class there. The result was that I tried (and succeeded) to pass that class with the strict minimum of effort possible and deliberately forgot everything that I had to learn about C as quickly as possible afterwards. I was a "very good" student back then otherwise, so this was not due to general laziness. What that class has taught me, essentially, was to *hate* C. And it was not an issue of bad teachers. And they didn't mean to make me hate C, after all, it was them who had chosen that language. I never ever used C for anything (outside of that class). And ever after that experience, I avoided all languages that were even remotely similar to C, such as C++, Java, C#, Javascript, PHP etc. In numerics classes and for research projects, I had to learn and use Fortran, which was easy after the introduction with Pascal. The teachers who taught me Fortran easily were the same as those who made me hate C. Then, I accidentally got in touch with Python (in 1994 iirc) and thought it was interesting and useful. In fact Python is the only programming language that I ever learned without being obliged to do so. And the only one that I keep using whenever I have the choice. Since then, the university that once used C as a "first language" has switched to Python. Which is a good thing, imho. If I had had to learn the basics of programming with C instead of Pascal, I most certainly would have avoided anything even remotely connected to programming ever since, even "office automation" through scripting (which is what I use Python for today). Sincerely, Wolfgang -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
