Decisions in teaching someone else to program: language selection
- by Dinah
My friend would like for me to guide her into learning programming. She's already proven enormous aptitude for thinking like a programmer but is scared of the idea of programming since in her mind it's relegated to some magical realm accessible only to smart people and trained computer scientists (ironically, I am neither but that's beside the point).
My main question is the age-old and irritating question: which language should I chose? I've limited it down to these:
PHP: dead simple to start with and I remember enough of the language to answer all novice questions. However, I can think of a million reasons why I wouldn't recommend this as a first language. The most diplomatic of which is that there's no desktop app option to which I would feel comfortable subjecting a novice.
Python: supposed to be wonderful for beginners and generally everything I've heard about it screams that this is the correct choice. That's the problem: everything I've heard about it. I don't know it yet and have a lot of projects going on right now so I don't feel like learning it yet -- but I'm going to be the tech-support when any little thing goes wrong. I know there are tons of online resources but in the frustration of the moment, it's always going to be just me.
C#: this is the language I'm most comfortable with so I know I can be good tech support. I also love this language and its versatility and community. The big drawback here is that I remember when I first learned it after doing mainly PHP, Perl, and JavaScript and I found the experience overwhelming. You are simultaneously learning: programming concepts, C# syntax, strong typing, OOP, and a complex powerful IDE with a bazillion options and buttons all over it.
