Python As A First Language

Python programming became my real “first” computer programming language. That isn’t to say that I am any good at it, I doubt I have crossed from beginner to an intermediate level. Though, for this topic, as a beginner programmer, I feel as though my voice may carry some clout.

The first two languages I experienced programming in were python and C++. Python felt quite a bit more natural to learn first, as you don’t have to learn all the syntax immediately. Python is fairly straight forward, “print (“Hello World”)” prints Hello World.

If you define equations like:

x = 2

y = 3

z = x + y

print (“z”)

This will print 5.

The benefits of Python is that you do not need to declare variables as integers, the programming language will interpret your inputs and declare them for you. This is one of the most pragmatic uses of Python. It helps a student to get some practice with coding without having to learn the difficult syntax of more developed programming languages.

Python allows students to create more advanced functions using an easier method than otherwise available. For example, when I was learning C++, it took me close to a month of coursework to get to the point where I was comfortable defining a function to square a number. I was learning Python at the same time and figured it out much sooner.