I agree with the author for the most part, however here is my experience:
I have taught three people how to program (not a large sample size I know...) each one I have chosen a different approach. It honestly depends more on the individual than the language.
Individual 1: They were interested in history, video games, politics and desired to learn programming. For him, he seemed more interested in the history of programming, so I chose to help him learn BASIC as his first language simply because of the history associated with it (I could have chose FORTRAN or COBOL). He enjoyed it more because he could connect, he thrived off imagining the other early programmers writing in BASIC. Further, he felt as if he was building and learning in a similar fashion to most programmers and that made him want to learn more languages advancing in a similar fashion.
Individual 2: For her, NetLogo was the simple choice. She understood nothing of programming and honestly did not want to at the time, but knew she needed programming knowledge to help her obtain a job in biology in the future. NetLogo offered a way to both teach her the basics of programming (objects, loops, etc.) while being pretty fun, we made an eco-system. This actually excited her about programming to the extent that she is now learning python and joined ACM.
Individual 3: For him Ruby was probably the best introduction to programming, he was interested in learning how to develop website applications. Due to the fact he had no programming experience and was interested in web applications it seemed clear (to me) that Ruby was going to be the easiest way for him to learn to program. He loved it, and has since moved on to learning C, since it turns out he loved the control programming offers him.
The point, is that each programming language has a community/documentation and specific uses, it depends on personality and what ones goals are when determining what language to learn first. Since I have always been interested in both improving myself and others I have read a few books on the subject, my favorite is The Talent Code [1]. The book explains that each person has a different personality/experiences and in turn "learn best" in different ways, which is essentially what I employed here (without explicitly meaning to).
I agree with the author that Python (in many cases) is the best language to have a want-to-be programmer learn. It offers simplicity, logic, standard libraries, community, and tutorials in abundance, however it may not excite a person or have applications in what a persons interests are (which can reduce enthusiasm and in turn learning).
I have taught three people how to program (not a large sample size I know...) each one I have chosen a different approach. It honestly depends more on the individual than the language.
Individual 1: They were interested in history, video games, politics and desired to learn programming. For him, he seemed more interested in the history of programming, so I chose to help him learn BASIC as his first language simply because of the history associated with it (I could have chose FORTRAN or COBOL). He enjoyed it more because he could connect, he thrived off imagining the other early programmers writing in BASIC. Further, he felt as if he was building and learning in a similar fashion to most programmers and that made him want to learn more languages advancing in a similar fashion.
Individual 2: For her, NetLogo was the simple choice. She understood nothing of programming and honestly did not want to at the time, but knew she needed programming knowledge to help her obtain a job in biology in the future. NetLogo offered a way to both teach her the basics of programming (objects, loops, etc.) while being pretty fun, we made an eco-system. This actually excited her about programming to the extent that she is now learning python and joined ACM.
Individual 3: For him Ruby was probably the best introduction to programming, he was interested in learning how to develop website applications. Due to the fact he had no programming experience and was interested in web applications it seemed clear (to me) that Ruby was going to be the easiest way for him to learn to program. He loved it, and has since moved on to learning C, since it turns out he loved the control programming offers him.
The point, is that each programming language has a community/documentation and specific uses, it depends on personality and what ones goals are when determining what language to learn first. Since I have always been interested in both improving myself and others I have read a few books on the subject, my favorite is The Talent Code [1]. The book explains that each person has a different personality/experiences and in turn "learn best" in different ways, which is essentially what I employed here (without explicitly meaning to).
I agree with the author that Python (in many cases) is the best language to have a want-to-be programmer learn. It offers simplicity, logic, standard libraries, community, and tutorials in abundance, however it may not excite a person or have applications in what a persons interests are (which can reduce enthusiasm and in turn learning).
[1] http://thetalentcode.com/