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What programming language would you recommend for teaching to non-technical people that use a variety of different OSes? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by communism@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I'm going to be delivering an online intro to programming session to a non-technical crowd who will be "following along at home". Because it's online, I can't provide them with machines that are already set up with an appropriate development environment.

I'm familiar with Linuxes and BSDs but honestly have no idea how to get set up with programming stuff on Windows or macOS which presumably most of these people will use, so I need something I can easily instruct them on how to install, and has good cross-platform support so that a basic programming lesson will work on whatever OS the attendees are running. Remember they are non-technical so may need more guidance on installation, so it should be something that is easy to explain.

My ideas:

C: surely every OS comes with a C compiler pre-installed? I know C code is more platform-specific, but for basic "intro to programming" programs it should be pretty much the same. I think it's a better language for teaching as you can teach them more about how the computer actually works, and can introduce them to concepts about memory and types that can be obscured by more high-level languages.
Python: popular for teaching programming, for the reasons above I'd prefer not to use Python because using e.g. C allows me to teach them more about how the computer works. You could code in Python and never mention types for instance. Rmemeber this is only an intro session so we're not doing a full course. But Python is probably easy to install on a lot of OSes? And of course easy to program in too.
Java: good cross-platform support, allows for teaching about types. Maybe a good compromise between the benefits outlined above for C and Python?

Any opinions?

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[–] bobo1900@startrek.website 20 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

C is full of complex paradigms and low level details that are great if you're learning computer architectures, but pretty bad if it's your first languages.

Python in the other hand is great to learn programming practices and for quick, non-optimized, easy scripts. I think it's less suited for more complex projects, but that's another thing. I honestly fon't think it's a great language, but it's easy to use and has pretty much a library for everything, that's why I think it's good to start and for simple things.

Java is also quite high level, so also good for beginners, but I've never used it so I don't know how easy is to setup (python is) and how easy it is to download dependencies (on python it is).

For your case I would say Python is best.

[–] tyler@programming.dev 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Java is much easier to set up than Python is. For one Java works with mise, asdf, sdkman and numerous other automatic tool managers. Python on the other hand works with none of those. I wouldn’t recommend either for being easy to set up. Ruby is much easier than both (including my favorite language, Kotlin) and has just as many nice features and is much easier to read than Python.

[–] bobo1900@startrek.website 2 points 6 days ago

I don't know, my experience with python is "sudo apt install python3" on linux and "download the installer on windows and run it", I see many comments mentionting python difficilt to install but I really can't see why