Python is now the most popular introductory language at top U.S. universities

I do not know any Python (yet) - and my comment is probably off-topic. I spent a fall semester at Northeastern U, Boston in '97 and took a graduate course in Data Structures which was taught in C. I loved this course and finished top of the class (It helped that I was already familiar with C from an undergrad engg course). I fell in love with C. Implementing dequeues, linked lists, trees etc. with C was a pleasure - I learnt a lot about memory management responsibilities, smart error handling and began to understand how programming can be beautiful. Many years later when I started learning and working with Java, I felt that if this course had been taught with Java, I would not have gained as much (I could be wrong). The simple steps of typing your code in the standed editor supported by the environment (we were using a flavour of Unix in school), saving your work, compiling on the CLI and seeing the results - we just had to focus on our algorithm and nothing else. Your sentence "Many of our students have never programmed with a text editor before our unit, and dropping them into the big boilerplate world of Java micro-management was not good for them or for the course" stands out for me in this context. Since I know zero Python, I wonder how it compares. This reminds of Joel Spolsky's essay : http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchool...

I'm an undergrad at one of the outlier schools (UCLA) where a combination of the quarter system and a relatively conservative CS department make for an interesting undergrad curriculum. Our "CS 1" is taught in C++ and is mostly dedicated to well, C++. The entire first course is essentially dedicated to teaching you how to not blow your leg off while managing memory.

We don't even touch data structures, algorithms, composition, inheritance, etc until "CS 2," which is also in C++. When I first tried Python as part of a 1-week assignment in "CS 2.5" (a lab course), I was blown away and hooked pretty quickly. We don't get formal Python experience really until the extremely work-intensive upper division programming languages course. From my perspective, I think a large number of people are discouraged by CS 1 and how it's more of a programming class than a CS class. The only benefit of a C++ introduction is that it's easier for people to transition to C and lower level code for the operating systems class. Still, C is pretty well covered by our "CS 2.5" and "CS 3."

Other fun facts: our CS 0 (programming for non-CS majors) is split into three classes and is also in C++!

I accidentally took a C++ at a community college during high school and was forced to skip "CS 1" when I enrolled for my first quarter. I felt so unprepared for "CS 2" that I actually audited a good number of "CS 1" lectures and did half of the projects for the class even though I didn't take it.

Actual course numbers:

CS 1 -> CS 31

CS 2 -> CS 32

CS 2.5 -> CS 35L

CS 3 -> CS 33

CS 0(a-c) -> PIC 10(a-c)

I agree, there's no reason to downvote you for that. However, php only comes with "everything" if you assume it is already installed with a web server. As far as I know, you can't use the php (dev) webserver to serve php scripts without additional configuration.

Contrast[1] with python:

    mkdir cgi-bin
    cat  cgi-bin/hello.py
    #!/usr/bin/env python3
    print("Content-type: text/plain")
    print()
    print("Hello, world")
    eof
    
    #try to run:
    ./cgi-bin/hello.py
    bash: ./cgi-bin/hello.py: Permission denied
    #fix error:
    chmod u+x ./cgi-bin/hello.py
    #test in console:
    ./cgi-bin/hello.py
    Content-type: text/plain

    Hello, world
    #Ok, does it work on the web?
    python3.4 -m http.server --cgi 8000 --bind 127.0.0.1

    #open localhost:8000/cgi-bin/hello.py

So, how can I claim that this convoluted mess is "simpler" than php? Because everything is right there, and everything can be explained conciesly (contrast with apache configs, getting the www-user right etc). You could build on what the students know of print() and string interpolation/concatenation to output html/use templates etc.

Is this how I would start teaching web programming in python? Probably not -- but it might be useful as one approach, assuming we've started with doing some stdin/stdout stuff, and showing how we can do the same on the web. Crucially showing how if you know how to read a csv file with values, do some aggreation and format it as a text table, you can output it as html, as text over the web, or even as json paired with javascript. That again generalises to database access ... etc etc. It's python (and "invisible" c) all the way down.

[1] Comparing using a fully wrapped up install of webserver+php (either mod-php or fcgi or what not) would a) not be fair, because if you really learn python, you have all the tools to examine the whole stack (well down to the OS level anyway), and b) fair comparision wouldn't be to python but rather with something like web2py, that also bundles a lot of infrastructure.

YMMV and all that, my only point was that there isn't really anything "simple" about web development -- it's distributed development with not very clearly defined security, state or even messaging semantics -- it's a mess. A useful mess, but a mess.

[edit: formatting, spelling. Aslo I agree flask is probably a much nice place to start, if one isn't building on an introduction involving text/console i/o]

Hi, I'm afraid it's (b). I have no web development experience.. It all started last year when I had an app idea, I started developing it with some computer science students but I realised that if I'm the creator of the idea and I cannot build it, I can only be like the commercial guy in charge of making money out of the programs those students make! And that wasn't the purpose! So now I've just got into web development from cero (fortran 90) to be able to create a kind of prototype of the product, so it's exactly as I imagine it.

I've started with the ruby course on codecademy, it seems it's just like a fun introduction to the ruby syntax. When I finish the codecademy course I'm thinking about going into "onemonth.com" for learning rails, and codeschool after that..

Thank you! I'll get started with those languages as well :) I'm focusing on web apps, but I'll have to use JS to take the idea to phone app (using Titan from appcelerator)

By the way! Thanks for the invite to the course! I'll contact you as soon as I find out how to send a PM haha

I learned C++ first, then Java, then more recently Python.

I really feel like I'd have rather had Python or Java first instead, if only because being concerned about all of the strict formatting and structure in a C++ program puts a level of unnecessary complexity in front of the goal: to introduce a person to programming logic and solving problems with programs.

Those complexities are certainly important, mind you. But not as important as clearly opening the mind to the way a programmer thinks, IMO.