A few weeks ago Nate’s friend was asking for recommendations on which language to use when teaching children how to program. At the time, I recommended Python (but I mentioned that Logo and HTML could be useful as well).

Today I came across A Very Quick Comparison of Popular Langauges for Teaching Computer Programming. The languages covered include BASIC, C, Java, and Python. And Python seems to come out on top:

For teaching as a first language however it has some specific advantages. As can be seen from the examples above (ignoring BASIC), Python requires less time, less lines of code, and less concepts to be taught to reach a given goal. This allows more time to be spent on the important things.

I definitely think Ruby and Logo should be added to the list. And perhaps Pascal or FORTRAN might be worth looking at as well. But it’s a decent summary, and worth reading if you plan on doing some teaching.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 30th, 2006 at 7:27 pm and is filed under Programming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.