Overkill: Java as a first programming language (2010)

I started in BASIC as a kid. The barrier to entry was minimal and fun for a few hundred lines of code.

To manage the complexities of a large code base, you need to have supports and infrastructure and information hiding to structure it neatly. That adds extra code, but contains it in a way to makes sense of it all.

The thing is, a person learning a first programming language doesn't understand it and cannot reason about it. They're more interested in "why do we use a for loop" and "what's an int?" and less interested in "How do these static objects work?".

But I agree with you to an extent. Eventually the hand holding has to stop, we have to take the training wheels off, and they're going to have to fall a few times. But it's easier to get back up after you've had training wheels, because you know what it feels like to ride a bike.

Examples: in junior ruby engineer, even some mid level, the confusion between local variables and attributes causes huge amounts of confusion. I don't know how many times I've asked "why is this an instance variable?" to a response being the sound of crickets.

Things like attr_* in ruby cannot be appreciated until you know why they're there. In more verbose languages like Java you're forced to understand from the beginning. Yes, there's more to learn before you get started but once you've learned it you're capable.

Learning Java was a huge "aha!" moment for me after having spent years with ruby. I've known others who express the same.

I think developers who don't learn a language like Java first hit a very hard and tall walls at some point in their learning and advancement.

Java also is much better, IMHO, language to learn design patterns in, because there is often no shortcuts provided by syntax to "prevent" or circumvent them. Also an added bonus is that the example you're reading is likely to be in Java.

I used to think scripting languages were great for learning to program but my tune has changed as I've progressed over the last decade. I now think they inhibit learning at a certain point because they lack the rigidity needed to demonstrate more advanced techniques to the learner.

I love ruby, it's in my damn username, I just don't like it as a first language these days.

However, it is not just a matter of Java having a syntax that imposes a lot of cognitive load on novices. It is about being able to talk basic programming language features independently from advanced languages features. This is independent of both syntactic and semantic complexity. Python's clean syntax, for example, masks some really complex semantics.

Neither Java and Python are poor programming languages, but their overriding design goals are to be languages that proficient programmers can be very productive in. The pervasive mistake in CS education seems to be that these languages are therefore great choices for teaching programming to non-programmers. They are almost certainly not.

I really hope that the discussion of languages for CS1 can move beyond this. There are many languages whose overriding design goal is to be phenomenal for introductory computing education. They are designed by computer science educators, and are shaped foremost by the observed successes and difficulties of actual students that are learning to program with them. They provide answers for educators beyond just a syntax and semantics; frequently, they come battle-tested textbooks and teaching materials.

[0] https://docs.racket-lang.org/drracket/htdp-langs.html