What is the best, first computer programming language to teach?

[just_me]

Hey you guys,

When I went to college, we learned Pascal first because it was strongly-typed and the compiler could find a lot of the errors for you.

Java is even better at finding errors at compile-time, but imaging that you're an educator and it is your job to construct a curriculum for an introduction to computer software development.

Compare the Java HelloWorld (which some of us understand) to the Python HelloWorld which everyone can understand.

One of my students said about Java, "It's amazing that you can understand this". Maybe, Python should be the new first language to teach for computer software development.

http://www.python.org/

Java

// what in the hell?
public class HelloWorld {
public static void main( String [] args) {
System.out.println("Hello, world.");
}
}


Python

// no comment needed
print "Hello, world."