Comment by vascocosta
Comment by vascocosta 16 hours ago
Interesting viewpoint. It is my belief that Lua would be nice as a first language, but maybe this opinion is tainted by all my years of experience in programming. Lua definitely wasn't my first language, I started out with C/C++ and Java, long ago. Nothing beats having first-hand experience as a teacher and thus I'll accept your opinion as something more substantiated than my gut feeling.
I'm quite interested in this topic, since I would like to write a good book to introduce absolute beginners into the world of programming. I have a good and encompassing knowledge about many different languages, nevertheless I lack teaching experience.
In your opinion, which languages are good candidates as a first choice and what do you think about using a Lua game framework, like for instance Love2D to teach programming (instead of raw standalone Lua)? The idea being that instead of clunky low level awkwardness, like string manipulation, students would instead see geometrical shapes moving on a screen with just a bunch of simple and imperative statements. Would that provide a better motivation?
I think if you were going to design a rigorous approach to programming from the ground up as part of a like new quadrivium or something, lua could have a place in it.
But when people decide to learn programming now, they usually have a goal in mind so the best language is the one that lets them keep that objective in focus as they learn. Not necessarily do it most easily: love is good because while making a game with it is a huge undertaking for a novice, they can see the whole time that game-making is what they're building up to.
But for example I've seen rank beginners get really fascinated with data visualization, or interacting with their local government's API, or text generation, or audio stuff. All things that are going to be out of reach for a novice in lua. And a lot of people will show up saying they want to make games, but it's because video games are the one programming artifact they have positive experiences with. Once they start to see the broader possibilities other interests develop.
Anyway I have had a lot of success introducing programming with roblox scripting. It adds a lot of the "missing" lua library features and the script editor is a decent basic IDE that simplifies tooling, another huge pain point for novices.
For non-game focused beginners I've had the best results in ruby. Python works as well once you get going but the whitespace is a frustrating time sink in a classroom environment. In these the strength is being able to grab a library for any API they'd want to work with, and build something that feels like an actual useful tool to them.