>>11099Python (and Scheme!) has a super simple syntax that can be learned quickly, and lets you focus on learning computation and computational thinking—what SICP is mostly about and what a first year course should teach.
Python isn't the only language with these features though, but it also happens to be popular, practical (used for almost everything), and can even give good job prospects. Solid choice overall.
In my school we do C++. The end result is that we don't learn computation as much as the syntax of C++. C++ is verbose and the professors spent too much time explaining its nuances and what every line meant. Therefore, people barely learned programming and just poorly learned C++. The same applies to Java schools. You can teach well with those languages, but in my experience it's rare.
Of course, I think learning C and/or C++ is important for obvious reasons, and MIT has course on them. But to me, they are not the best "first" language for learning computation.
