Teaching python (programming) to children

[Neil Hodgson]

David Andreas Alderud:

> I love Python, I advocate it a lot, but I believe that Ada95
> is the prime language for beginners.

   I was an Ada83 programmer (on a non-military project) and I don't think
its a good language for beginners. Ada is too large to be fully understood
within a reasonable time. Type based overloading is very complex to
understand and predict. The task feature was particularly troublesome as it
did not map onto other well established multi-tasking models. Ada95 looks
even more complex with one core language and 10 optional annexes.

   Ada's strict typing goes too far adding much noise to basic operations if
used to define all variables with appropriate constraints. Eventually
programmers give up on this and start using the simple basic types instead.

   Use appears to have contracted to just military projects here, most
commercial users dropping it for C/C++ to increase productivity.

   Neil