Why did we ever think a student's first programming language didn't matter?

But the article states near the end:

> Conversational programmers struggle to find resources that help them learn because so many of them require a focus on the logic and mathematics, but we are developing approaches to help conversational programmers learn without the math. We might be able to teach a lot more people about programming if we don’t expect students to know mathematics first

I'm just not sure that's a great (or entirely workable) idea. Embrace the math!

That said, I don't think one has to learn the math first; you can learn math and programming at the same time. In fact, it is perhaps easier to learn math when you have a concrete programming context to apply it to. I taught myself the basics of algebra by teaching myself BASIC in elementary school, years before I had a clue what "algebra" was. By the time I was taking algebra classes, it was a breeze. (Calculus on the other hand....)

Depending on who you ask, a first programming language (I'll say 1PL to reduce repetition of the phrase) should do one or more of the following:

1) Be practically useful even if the student drops computer science immediately.

2) Be low-level enough to teach the fundamentals of what's really going on with the machine.

3) Be high-level enough to teach the fundamentals of true computer science.

4) Be stringent enough to allow the users to learn precision in their programming.

5) Be lax enough to allow the users to not get bogged down in endless boilerplate.

6) Be in common usage to help ensure immediate practical users for the language.

7) Be an exotic to avoid turning the first year and a half of CS courses into a competition to see who spent the most of their formative years messing with computers.

8) Bonus round: claim that the 1PL is a bogus fixation and instead the learners should learn several different languages.

The problem with all these arguments is that they are all sorta-kinda true, but the consistent application of even a few of them result in a learning load that would result in the first year of computer science (or some "intro to programming" course) being not so much a major but a 2-3 year full time job carried out to the exclusion of all else.

It might make a lot more sense to think not about the 1PL but how the 2ndPL, 3rdPL, etc. are introduced and when. Instead of overloading the 1PL with a host of contradictory and pretentious goals, maybe we teach people the basics of programming as quickly as possible and move on?

For my part, I think the experience of the 1PL should be focused on usability and fun. I'm not really a fan of the whole Java thing for reasons not germane to this, but "Processing" really had a whiff of what was fun about messing around with Commodore 64 BASIC back in the day. Maybe that's more important than making sure that the language in which everyone adds up columns of numbers and prints an invoice for some fucking stupid imaginary warehouse application properly inculcates everyone into the One True Way of Thinking About Computing, whether that's being close to the hardware, or being able to write metacircular interpreters, or be a service course for some miserable engineering department.

The fact is, most of these first-year courses are dull, miserable and unappealing.

Other students seem to learn programming extremely easily. I would show them something one day, and the next day they've already used what I showed them in their code.

I'm open to the hypothesis that its my fault that some of my students failed to learn programming. I certainly felt terrible for them when they worked really hard and still failed. But I don't think its all me. I certainly can't take equal credit for the students who did very well. My star students seemed like they barely needed me to teach them anything at all.

And for what its worth, the perspective that talent doesn't matter is an awful thing to teach struggling students if its wrong. Students hear that as "If I struggle at programming it must be my fault". I don't think it is. I think some people just have brains wired to make programming easier or harder to learn. There's no shame in encouraging some people to pick a different career. If programming really isn't right for someone, the sooner they swap to something else, the better.

I'll believe that when employers stop giving preference to people with university credentials.

Until they do that, the primary reason most people go to university for CS will continue to be 'for vocational training.' People follow incentives.