Hello,
I am thinking about teaching my students JavaScript first so that they can start creating websites and make their career, what are your thoughts?
Maybe a middle ground like Go.
The answer is Python
So, of the two JavaScript, because motivating them to program is more important than anything else if they have no prior knowledge. javascript has great tooling and faaar less hurdles to get something going then C. Personally i’d go with TypeScript if it has to be anything in this family of languages, because making them think of types early on is helpful when moving to anything more than little web apps. If any other languages are considered, i’d go with python with type hints because it forces you to format your code somewhat readably (believe me, i know that it’s possible to write unreadable python code) but is really low on boilerplate, has great tooling (at least third-party, use uv) as well as stellar IDE support and allows for multiple different paradigms to be explored.
C takes the cake
bashLet them learn what they’re interested in so long as it passes muster as capable of sufficiently handling the concepts you wish to convey. Some will want low level, some will want an app, some will want to make games. The cross pollination of concepts will demonstrate that while languages may have individual benefits they should not stop at one.
TypeScript > JavaScript all day
C teaches a whole variety of low level concepts that are helpful in any comp sci field. That’s my vote. Python holds your hand too much and JS would require more to get started. If they aren’t shooting for a comp sci degree and are just looking for helpful scripts then python would be fine.
I mean, they’ll probably learn more from C. But please. You can do better than javascript. At least teach them python or something.
JS is actually pretty great as a language these days.
It doesn’t have to imply NPM hell. And it’s got normal syntax and doesn’t do Python’s weird meaningful-indentation thing.
(It does have the == typecasting weirdness though.)
– Frost
What grade sudents is this for? Do you intend for this to be a dedicated class/semester or just a single unit? How good are they at operating a computer? (Typing, clicking, etc)
These are the questions that need answers before any meaningful advice can be given.
If you also plan on teaching html and css, than I’d go for js first. Having your code instantly response in a visual way, is super motivating for most students.
If you just want to tech programming concepts, i’d go for python.
If you want this to be the start of a complete cs study, than you can start with CThat makes sense, I am also teaching html amd css first so I think JavaScript makes sense to teach next.
I was thinking about C because that’s the first thing I learned in the college and that’s my favorite language till this day.
The problem with C as a language for learning is that the error messages are not very specific or descriptive and often you need extra context to understand what is happening. Messing up memory management can result in inconsistent gremlin-like behavior from your programs, it can get very tricky. I had a pretty difficult time when I got to classes that taught C compared to other languages, but the main thing was just that I needed someone to look over my work and explain things to me because unlike with other languages, the self-service ways of figuring it out were much more difficult and it’s easier to get stuck with no idea what to look into next. I ended up begging people online for help with understanding what was going wrong with my programs to supplement the limited amount of time the professor and TAs were available, really grateful to those guys as I probably would have failed it otherwise.
Anyway I would just say that if you do really want to go with C, I think you should be willing to put in more time to explain things to students one on one because many of them may need it.
If you teach them C, they will then be able to digest JS in an afternoon…
Good call. At this point the jankyness of js doesn’t pose a problem and the ones that get enticed will learn about type safety, classes etc down the line.
I would teach Typescript. Being able to write the types down and hover things to see what types they are will definitely help them.
I think C would put them off. I also wouldn’t go with Python, in case they want to do things like write games or make websites, which are common tasks you can do with Typescript but not very well with Python.
Python has PyGame. For webdev it has some libraries but those do not really teach any basics.
Python’s performance is too poor to do anything serious. Go and look at the screenshots from Pygame. They look like ZX Spectrum era games.
Compare that to something like PixiJS.
Why not SmallBasic then? You could even point them to old computer magazines and see which codes they can get running without much workaround.
Why not python? C needs constant memory management and JavaScript is too chaotic. Both seem to me a bit too complicated for someone just starting
The main reason to not including python is that students aren’t particularly in the CS field, they are learning it as their “augmented skill” (I don’t know what it’s called bad English). That’s why I don’t want to force them to learn CS concept which they might not even need.
I was thinking about C so that their fundamentals gets cleared but I think it will be too much for students who aren’t into CS. What do you think ?
If they’re not in the CS field, and you don’t want to teach them CS concepts that they don’t need, then you have eliminated C as an option by your own criteria.
With C, they’ll have to learn about compilers, build systems, memory management, and pointers at the very least.
Idk why you are discarding python for the reason that makes python the best option. If there is a programming language that a non-programmer should know, it’s python.
Python allows you to focus on a single concept in isolation (building on what you’ve already learned, of course). JS has a bunch of other stuff mixed in. Like the DOM. Interacting with the DOM is necessary for any browser code. You can hide it with abstractions and boilerplate, but it’s always going to surface in error messages. Debugging JS can be quite a bit harder than other languages.
Caveat: beginner JS is many years behind me. It may not be as bad as corporate code full of react and angular and all kinds of requirements.
The main reason to not including python is that students aren’t particularly in the CS field, they are learning it as their “augmented skill” (I don’t know what it’s called bad English). That’s why I don’t want to force them to learn CS concept which they might not even need.
That’s an even better reason to pick Python, then.
The main reason to not including python is that students aren’t particularly in the CS field
If that’s the case C is the very first thing they should avoid spending time on.
I would start with Python. It’s a fun language to learn, and generally recommended for beginners. Towards the end, I would spend a few sessions on c, not to teach them c but to give them an appreciation for what they get for free in higher level languages.
