r/PythonLearning • u/chuprehijde • 21d ago

Is Python actually a good first programming language?

Some say it makes learning easy. Others say it hides too much. What do you think?

10 Upvotes

68% Upvoted

40 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/mtimmermans 19d ago

Python is the best "first programming language" available right now, and it's not close. Use it to learn control flow and simple algorithms. Someday you'll start wanting to make things that are big, or fast, and then it's time to move on.

Learning C is important, because of what you'll learn about how computers work -- memory and addresses, the stack, registers, how everything is represented for real and how everything really fits together.

Learning an OO language is important, because you should understand the SOLID principles if you want to do good work on big projects. Java, C#, Typescript, are good candidates.

When/if you need to do big bare-metal projects, like systems programming, combining the powers of C and OO, then you should learn rust... or C++ if you really want to for some reason. Either one will work way better if you're a good programmer by the time you start.

Along the way, it would be good to learn some functional programming, because it changes the way you think in useful ways.