this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2024
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Sure python may be easier to learn, but it makes learning actual programming more difficult. Ever since the CS department switched to python, my workload as a computer systems TA has doubled.
That sounds similar to this quote:
"It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." — Edsger Dijkstra, 1975
But there's been a good deal of programmers who have said that BASIC, and its ease of use and seeing almost instant results is extremely useful to not turn people off learning to code to begin with. Python is functionally the new BASIC in that regard, and while the language itself may not teach you to become an expert programmer, it may have gotten more people in the door than otherwise would have.
But that's just my 2 cents.
that may be true for CS and software development, but I think that has ended up being more harmful for other fields like electrical engineering. Kind of like how non STEM majors are too afraid to try engineering or sciences, because they all think calculus is this big scary incomprehensible thing that only einstein-level geniuses can learn. I'm seeing that same kind of fear preventing students from going into engineering because they don't want to learn anything besides python.
I was exposed to both basic and python first. No wonder it was so much harder for me to do code!