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There is one camp of thought that argues that the first learned language should be C (or even some assembler). The motivation being that

  1. Doing everything yourself builds discipline to e.g. garbage collect
  2. Inventing the wheel is good for understanding the roots of more sophisticated "real" programming
  3. Closer to the actual hardware
  4. etc.

On the other hand, high level languages. like python, allow one to quickly dive into the programming world, without spending a month to learn what a pointer is.

In my country, most universities teach Java, probably for marketing reasons.

And this is without mentioning functional programming, defensive programming languages (Ada) etc.

Which languages should be learned at school and at first year CS/engineering, to prepare one's mind for a career in programming?

Kilian Foth
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Vorac
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    The best way to prepare one's mind for a career in programming is for this person to make it a hobby long before university. – mouviciel Aug 31 '13 at 07:20
  • This question is very similar to yours: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10675/ideal-programming-language-learning-sequence. And this one too: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24159/which-programming-language-is-the-best-to-start-learning-teaching-about-programm – superM Aug 31 '13 at 08:17
  • And this one also has references to other similar questions: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/116151/what-language-should-be-used-to-teach-object-oriented-design-and-development-in – superM Aug 31 '13 at 08:24
  • It is the same question as the others linked. How can you not see why questions like this keep being closed? You have combined "Which is the best language for X?" with "How best to educate children/students?", which is like mixing gunpowder with gelignite. – itsbruce Aug 31 '13 at 10:05
  • You may be interested in http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/1954/criteria-for-selecting-language-for-first-programming-course – AProgrammer Aug 31 '13 at 11:24

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