<story><title>Retiring Python as a Teaching Language</title><url>http://prog21.dadgum.com/203.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Mithaldu</author><text>As much as i can&amp;#x27;t disagree with the choice (the realpolitik of programming has made it the most correct choice), i am saddened that the language on which the choice falls is one not chosen based on any merit, but merely due the historical accident of being the first to be implemented in a browser and having had no appreciable opposition due to browsers at the time being in hands of corporations.&lt;p&gt;In &amp;quot;A Deepness on the Sky&amp;quot;, Vernor Vinge describes a future in which there is the reality of a profession called &amp;quot;Programmer-at-Arms&amp;quot;, necessitated due to thousands of years of layers of indirection and cruft that will combine to make the software of that time, making it a requirement for even simple changes in a weapon system to be done by someone who can dig through all of those layers. It seems that his prediction is closer and closer to becoming reality.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>na85</author><text>&amp;gt;...i am saddened that the language on which the choice falls is one not chosen based on any merit, but merely due the historical accident of being the first...&lt;p&gt;Couldn&amp;#x27;t agree more.  Javascript is one of those things that I wish would just go the hell away and be replaced by something that isn&amp;#x27;t awful.</text></comment>
<story><title>Retiring Python as a Teaching Language</title><url>http://prog21.dadgum.com/203.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Mithaldu</author><text>As much as i can&amp;#x27;t disagree with the choice (the realpolitik of programming has made it the most correct choice), i am saddened that the language on which the choice falls is one not chosen based on any merit, but merely due the historical accident of being the first to be implemented in a browser and having had no appreciable opposition due to browsers at the time being in hands of corporations.&lt;p&gt;In &amp;quot;A Deepness on the Sky&amp;quot;, Vernor Vinge describes a future in which there is the reality of a profession called &amp;quot;Programmer-at-Arms&amp;quot;, necessitated due to thousands of years of layers of indirection and cruft that will combine to make the software of that time, making it a requirement for even simple changes in a weapon system to be done by someone who can dig through all of those layers. It seems that his prediction is closer and closer to becoming reality.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rattray</author><text>Language of choice for beginners need not mean &lt;i&gt;only&lt;/i&gt; language of choice. If Javascript is great to get started with, great. Once someone has that down, they can still continue on to learn C, Haskell, and other more interesting languages that explore CS fundamentals &amp;amp; theory. Or so I would imagine, anyway?</text></comment>