Python should not be taught as a foundational language

Nothing in this article is foundational, just stuff the author doesn't like or understand (such as the differences between arrays and lists) and it all happened to be superficial as hell. There are valid reasons to not teach python as a foundational language (and valid reasons for it as a good intro language), but none of them are in this article. As another commenter put it, it reads more like "why isn't Python C?" and still somehow misses the important teaching aspects of the C family of languages.

To my mind, it boils down to whether you think static types and memory management are foundational skills that a programmer is well served to learn early and build upon, or merely cognitive overhead that distract from what the programmer is trying to do. If the former, then obviously a language that ignores those is detrimental to long term development. If the latter, then clearly you want something like Python as your introductory language. I think either stance is defensible.

Actually, I wonder if the right conclusion isn't one side or the other, but that separate tracks for systems programming vs web dev (or whatever dichotomy you prefer) should be introduced earlier on in education, maybe separate specializations within a CS degree.

While I share plenty of the annoyances this author has with Python, and I’m sympathetic to the argument, they never quite manage to spell out why Python’s choices are somehow worse than any other language other than that Python does things differently.

Why is having constant variables so important when learning? Why are curly braces important? The author never says.

Meanwhile, while I agree Python’s strings are overcomplex and often frustrating, the weird digression about how “most languages” have char and char[] and String is a fancy wrapper, is actually just incorrect at this point and reveals just how narrow the author’s experience actually is.

In the meantime, my kid learned to program using Python and then went on to do very well picking up Java In subsequent classes. In my opinion, she’s far better off for being exposed to two very different languages early on rather than coming up thinking everything needs to look like C to be a “real” language.

The author seems to make a circular argument: foundational languages look like C++/Java, Python doesn't look like C++/Java, ergo Python is not a foundational language.

There are no foundational languages, what is foundational is CS theory itself. C++ and Java are just part of the ALGOL tradition, which syntactically relies on a bunch of arbitrary choices (curly braces vs indentation is an arbitrary symbolic choice and any preference is personal and subjective), and furthermore were highly influenced by 70s computer architecture that doesn't really exist anymore. In other words: just a bunch of legacy choices.

Python is the best general-purpose language there is at the moment, because of its popularity, ubiquity, actual use in a wide diversity of domains and availability of libraries for almost anything you can think of. Furthermore, the syntax is simple enough for one to be able to keep it all in one's head and not having to constantly refer to documentation. If you learn Python today, it will likely be useful to you for the rest of your life in a variety of situations.

Getting used to curly braces in ALGOL-like languages is a minor intellectual challenge compared to what awaits someone taking a Computer Science or Engineering degree.

> however in practice I find that it is much less legible and more kludgy to work with.

Can just stop reading here. I have seen many say this only the first few hours of trying Python, and that's it. So, this "kludgy to work with" indicates almost zero actual work with the language.