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'When I teach computer science courses, I want to cover important concepts in addition to making the material interesting and engaging to students. Unfortunately, there is a tendency for introductory programming courses to focus far too much attention on mathematical abstraction and for students to become frustrated with annoying problems related to low-level details of syntax, compilation, and the enforcement of seemingly arcane rules. Although such abstraction and formalism is important to professional software engineers and students who plan to continue their study of computer science, taking such an approach in an introductory course mostly succeeds in making computer science boring. When I teach a course, I don’t want to have a room of uninspired students. I would much rather see them trying to solve interesting problems by exploring different ideas, taking unconventional approaches, breaking the rules, and learning from their mistakes. In doing so, I don’t want to waste half of the semester trying to sort out obscure syntax problems, unintelligible compiler error messages, or the several hundred ways that a program might generate a general protection fault.

One of the reasons why I like Python is that it provides a really nice balance between the practical and the conceptual. Since Python is interpreted, beginners can pick up the language and start doing neat things almost immediately without getting lost in the problems of compilation and linking. Furthermore, Python comes with a large library of modules that can be used to do all sorts of tasks ranging from web-programming to graphics. Having such a practical focus is a great way to engage students and it allows them to complete significant projects. However, Python can also serve as an excellent foundation for introducing important computer science concepts. Since Python fully supports procedures and classes, students can be gradually introduced to topics such as procedural abstraction, data structures, and object-oriented programming — all of which are applicable to later courses on Java or C++. Python even borrows a number of features from functional programming languages and can be used to introduce concepts that would be covered in more detail in courses on Scheme and Lisp.'

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