I’m going to be delivering an online intro to programming session to a non-technical crowd who will be “following along at home”. Because it’s online, I can’t provide them with machines that are already set up with an appropriate development environment.
I’m familiar with Linuxes and BSDs but honestly have no idea how to get set up with programming stuff on Windows or macOS which presumably most of these people will use, so I need something I can easily instruct them on how to install, and has good cross-platform support so that a basic programming lesson will work on whatever OS the attendees are running. Remember they are non-technical so may need more guidance on installation, so it should be something that is easy to explain.
My ideas:
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C: surely every OS comes with a C compiler pre-installed? I know C code is more platform-specific, but for basic “intro to programming” programs it should be pretty much the same. I think it’s a better language for teaching as you can teach them more about how the computer actually works, and can introduce them to concepts about memory and types that can be obscured by more high-level languages.
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Python: popular for teaching programming, for the reasons above I’d prefer not to use Python because using e.g. C allows me to teach them more about how the computer works. You could code in Python and never mention types for instance. Rmemeber this is only an intro session so we’re not doing a full course. But Python is probably easy to install on a lot of OSes? And of course easy to program in too.
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Java: good cross-platform support, allows for teaching about types. Maybe a good compromise between the benefits outlined above for C and Python?
Any opinions?
python.
Its standard library is way better than lua in getting things done on your system. Imho a programming language that does not need internet-connection to a package manager to be useful is a big win.
python or lua
i loved learning on lua, it is a little better to learn than python (less keyword, “end” instead of }, 1-index, less types) but python is waaay more prominent
I need something I can easily instruct them on how to install, and has good cross-platform support so that a basic programming lesson will work on whatever OS the attendees are running. Remember they are non-technical so may need more guidance on installation, so it should be something that is easy to explain.
Honestly, as much as I personally despise it as a language and as much as you probably shouldn’t use it for large applications, JavaScript.
Every mainstream OS runs JavaScript, and it’s already pre-installed in the form of a web browser. On any desktop system (and even mobile systems with some effort) you can use any text editor to write an HTML file with inline JavaScript and run it by just clicking it.
Python, the next best option IMO, still requires knowledge of how to use the command line, and on Windows, requires installation that is slightly more involved than installing a regular program (adding it to your PATH, etc). Python for beginners are also limited mostly to console apps, and making a GUI is much more difficult especially for new programmers. Again, you’d first have to teach them what a console even is and how it’s actually still used by developers and is not a relic of the DOS days (something I’ve noticed non technical people tend to assume, they think GUIs made consoles obsolete). JS on the other hand is literally made to create GUIs on the web, meaning they will be able to create the kinds of software they’re already used to interacting with, which is both easier for them to wrap their minds around and also more enticing. Someone with no technical experience might wrongly assume that a text only interface is like “training wheels” and what they’re learning doesn’t apply to “real” software.
More importantly, they will be able to show off what they built to their friends, without needing them to install anything or send source code or executables which can get blocked by social media filters. Services like Netlify will host your static pages for free, making sharing their work as simple as posting a link. Having a GUI is even more important in this regard, so they don’t have to walk their friends through how to use a console app when they barely understand it themselves.
JS in the browser also has the benefit of being in a sandbox, meaning they can’t easily interact with other parts of their computer like files or system configurations. This may seem like a disadvantage but for someone just learning what programming is, it’s reassuring that they can’t accidentally kill their OS or delete their files.
surely every OS comes with a C compiler pre-installed? You would be mistaken.
Clearly OP has never used PC-DOS, MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows 11, MacOS, OSX, or AmigaOS, all of which do not come with a C compiler installed out of the box. Even Ubuntu does not have gcc or build headers installed in a default install (must install build-essentials package first).
Ada programming language. Check alire
C is full of complex paradigms and low level details that are great if you’re learning computer architectures, but pretty bad if it’s your first languages.
Python in the other hand is great to learn programming practices and for quick, non-optimized, easy scripts. I think it’s less suited for more complex projects, but that’s another thing. I honestly fon’t think it’s a great language, but it’s easy to use and has pretty much a library for everything, that’s why I think it’s good to start and for simple things.
Java is also quite high level, so also good for beginners, but I’ve never used it so I don’t know how easy is to setup (python is) and how easy it is to download dependencies (on python it is).
For your case I would say Python is best.
Java is much easier to set up than Python is. For one Java works with mise, asdf, sdkman and numerous other automatic tool managers. Python on the other hand works with none of those. I wouldn’t recommend either for being easy to set up. Ruby is much easier than both (including my favorite language, Kotlin) and has just as many nice features and is much easier to read than Python.
Scratch, teach them Scratch. It runs in a browser, it’s designed as a teaching language, teach them Scratch.
The problem with Scratch is that you don’t learn very much about computers with it. When I expressed I wanted to learn programming as a kid, I was directed to Scratch, and the whole time I was like “ok this is fun and cool, but when do I get to the real programming. I want to make an ‘actual program’.” You’d learn about how programming works on a very high level but you don’t learn much about how things work “under the hood” which imo is the fun thing about learning to program.
The best way I can articulate my goal is like how it feels to watch an edutainment video (think VSauce/Veritasium/Numberphile/etc)—you get a peek at some topic you didn’t know about before and feel you understand how the world works a bit better. It’s not the same thing as training someone up to be an expert, i.e. I’m not trying to turn these people into programmers (though if they’re interested enough they can of course go away and pursue that in their own time).
I’d also recommend something like scratch. If these people are non-technical as you say, they might not understand the concepts of directories on a computer, zipped files and so on. You’d be risking spending your teaching time troubleshooting the setup process and losing their interest before they ever get to write a line.
Of course that’s just based on how I interpreted your post, you know best their potential skill level.
Python, definitely.
It’s easy. Succinct. You can use any text editor. Has a huge community. Huge library.
Depends a bit on how much depth and which topics you want to hit. Scratch is easy to grasp and won’t require any real effort to set up, but may make adults feel like they’re being condescended to with its cartoony aesthetic, and might be a bit limited in how impressive you can make your demo. Python would require a bit of ‘teacher’s planning time’ to set up an easy workspace in Google’s collab tools and design a lesson, but could be used to show more depth if the students are the type to want/accept that depth, but don’t mistake interest for readiness.
Time might also be important to consider as well. If you have only the one session to cram things into, it might not be a great idea to go deep, and definitely would be asking for trouble to try to install anything on all those machines. Non-technical people have a knack for finding the holes in your plan or taking far longer to do something that requires them to act individually, which leaves you scrambling to try to play remote tech support for the 5-50% who need it while the people who ‘did it in one’ get bored.
And first things last, Murphy’s Law always applies to presentations. Just ask anyone at defcon. Even for people who are so tech-y they are teaching other tech people about tech, the demo might work 37 times the morning before your presentation, but it will fail on the 38th because that’s when you’re in front of the audience. Minimize your attack surface. When you are limited to one session, leaving them with a good, inspiring message that makes them want to keep learning is better than trying to info dump.
Good luck.
I’d be surprised if MS Windows came with a C compiler, tbh. But it’d be a bad choice for non-technical people anyway; it’s not exactly a user-friendly language…
Python would’ve been my choice, but maybe also consider Lua (a lot of games include it as their scripting language, which might be an easy selling point for people)
I would suggest taking a look at Scheme or Clojure for somebody who has no development experience. The big reasons being that these are high level languages so you can focus on learning the actual concepts without all the incidental complexity of imperative languages. Scheme in particular was designed as a teaching language. The other aspect is interactivity, Lisps have a tight integration between the editor and the REPL and you can evaluate functions as you write them. This is incredibly helpful for learning as you can write a function, send it for evaluation, and see the result immediately. So you can play with code and get an intuition for how things work.
Speaking of Scheme, I would suggest Racket, which comes battery included and ready to go in ONE installer. Easy to install on any system, and has a decent text editor/IDE provided. Also, the documentation is great, but can be daunting at first.
Seconded, I should’ve just said Racket really.
My university chose to teach a pure functional lisp-like language without for loops as they very first programming course in the computer science program lol. Everyone who “already knew” how to program in Python/Java/JS/etc hated it (including me at the time) because it knocked us from the peak of the Dunning-Kruger curve into the valley of despair like everyone else.
Took me years to understand the method to the madness and appreciate learning it.
It’s very frustrating to be in a situation where you know how to do something one way, but you can’t do it like that and you have to learn a completely different way to do it. Feeling like a beginner again makes people feel stupid, and most people don’t like that. But it really just means you’re learning a new way to approach problems.
That’s a really interesting suggestion. I’ve not used either. I had the impression that those languages are kinda esoteric, but maybe I’ll have a look.
While they’re far from mainstream, they’re definitely languages worth learning. And I’d argue that learning functional style first gives you a much better intuition regarding state management which makes you a better imperative programmer as a result. It’s much easier to go from functional to imperative than the other way around.
I mostly work with Clojure myself, and it’s pretty easy to set up with VSCode and Calva plugin. There’s also a lightweight runtime for it that doesn’t require the JVM which is great for a learning set up. You just run
bb --nrepl-serverand then connect the editor to it as shown here. From there on you can run code and see results right in the editor. This is a good overview of what the workflow looks like in practice.Also have some beginner resources I’ve used to train new hires on Clojure.
Introductory resources
- High level overview https://yogthos.github.io/ClojureDistilled.html
- core functions explained visually http://blog.josephwilk.net/clojure/functions-explained-through-patterns.html
- An Animated Introduction to Clojure https://markm208.github.io/cljbook
- Interactive tutorial in a browser https://tryclojure.org/
- Interactive exercises http://clojurescriptkoans.com/
- Notebooks with introductory examples https://github.clerk.garden/anthonygalea/notes-on-clojure
- Interactive book https://www.maria.cloud/
- Clojure style guide https://github.com/bbatsov/clojure-style-guide
- Clojure macros https://clojure-doc.github.io/articles/language/macros
- Puzzle Based Introduction to Functional Programming https://egri-nagy.github.io/popbook
A deeper dive
Yup thinking it’s for kids is a misnomer one of the most powerful tools to understand concepts in real time.
Thonny and Python are a pretty good successsion.
Second on Scratch. Then Python or Java.
(Pretty sure windows doesn’t come with any compilers anymore. Even if it did, it lacks an ide.)
What’s your target audience ? An what’s the goal ?
There is a difference between Giving a programming training to scientist/engineer who may need more than just Excel for data-processing/visualisation, and giving a discovery what programming looks-like for a general public, or people who want to do their own website.
For general public, the good-old “Logo” that kids learned programming with in the 70-90’s is still great
for scientists engineer, I would go for python which is the de-facto standard for data visualisation/processing when performance doesn’t matter
For a more foundation course, I think the everything is object approach in java can be pretty great
What’s your target audience ? An what’s the goal ?
Good questions. The goal is not to make new programmers but mostly to satisfy curiosity and help people learn about how the world works, specifically how computers work, and to feel more confident around tech. It’s for a non-technical crowd. Mostly just to give them a taster/peek “under the hood”.
If it’s a nontechnical crowd with no intention of using this knowledge in the workplace for actual programming, I’d agree with the other poster who recommended scratch: it’s a visual, object oriented language, so there are hardly chances for typos, it’s designed for learning, it runs in the browser. It’s a great language for kids and older “first contacts”
Consider providing students with vm. Then you can set up distro however you want, and write short instruction on how to run it and you know that they going to get whatever you want them to have for the course. That’s what i did several times. It helped a lot, because everyone’s pc going to be slightly different, packages, libraries etc.
Use Google Collab or another web hosted platform. If you’re unfamiliar Google Collab is a part of Google docs that you can run Jupyter Notebooks on (and it’s free). This avoids the need for anyone to install anything and means you can test materials in the same environment everyone will run against.
Additionally, Jupyter notebooks makes it easy to add markdown, so instructions can be in stylized format and the students can run the cells over and over again to see how the output changes in real time.
Lastly, I would lean towards python, but there are many different languages supported in Google Collab and similar web hosted tools.
