Python Bumps Off Java As Top Learning Language

itwbennett writes: Python has surpassed Java as the top language used to introduce U.S. students to programming and computer science, according to a recent survey posted by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Eight of the top 10 computer science departments now use Python to teach coding, as well as 27 of the top 39 schools, indicating that it is the most popular language for teaching introductory computer science courses, according to Philip Guo, a computer science researcher who compiled the survey for ACM."

Comments

Re:Which raises the critical question:

[ShadowRangerRIT]

I really hope 3.x, if only for the fact that your code tends to work with non-English text by default, because str supports the whole Unicode range, so it works with non-English input by default. Compare to 2.x where you have to make a conscious effort to work with Unicode. Particularly important for third party libraries, where they aren't producing a final application, and often don't think about Unicode at all even for text based APIs. Heck, the Python built-in csv module in 2.7 doesn't work properly with Unicode; you have to load or convert as UTF-8 bytes, parse, then decode to the 2.7 unicode type. It's a mess.

For teaching purposes 3.x is even better, since you have a proper distinction between binary data and text, rather than the mushy 2.x situation where str is sometimes binary data and sometimes handicapped text, while unicode is always text, and sometimes interoperates with str, while at other times it explodes. Teaching languages should be consistent, and 3.x is simply more consistent than 2.x (largely because of cleanup decisions like this).