What programming language to teach teens: Python

Online conversation included:

Which programming language you think it is more advisable?


Python. This will also give him a solid foundation upon which to proceed to C++ some day.

A lesser language suggestion is Squeak.


If you look at Squeak you might also look at Alice (http://www.alice.org/) which is Java based and now runs on Linux. Note both of these are environments and really independent of the OS.



Python tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/tocpyth.htm

What really interested me was the difference between the traditional first lesson of printing "Hello World" in Python vs. Java:

Python:

>>> print "Hello World"
Hello World
>>>

Java:

class Hello1 {
public static void main(String[] args){
System.out.println("Hello World");
}
}

Videos of German youngsters doing Python using Rur-Ple and Easy GUI:

http://showmedo.com/videos/series?name=pythonJensFromKidsSeries


Perl and python as each is sequential at the core, recipe-like, but can easily be made into "object-notation". They have a lot of add-ons (modules) for later, and have simple debuggers. There are many tutorials and examples to refer to. They are portable across platforms and operating systems. They are free, and well supported. They are not primarily an exercise in learning library call names,
unlike Java.

http://www.perl.org/
http://python.org/

Python graphics example
------------------

from pygame import display, draw
from time import sleep
display.init()
window = display.set_mode((800,600))
draw.circle(window,(255,0,0,),(400,300),100)
display.update()
sleep(5)

--------------

That program draws a red circle in the middle of the screen with 100 pixel radius. It's easy to animate the circle, make rectangles, polygons, and even photo-realistic bitmaps! Kids love graphics!