Replacing C with JavaScript as an introductory programming language [closed]

It all depend of the purpose of the course.

If the goal is to teach programming fundamentals, consideration about actual usefullness of the language should be largely ignored. Javascript is nice because it is used in browsers. On the other hand it has a lot of problems that will distract your students from the core message of your course. Learning javascript later is not that hard once you understand the fundamentals about programming.

In this perspective, a better solution would be to stick to c (because it is low level), use python (because it is simple and consistent, and you will be able to focus on design), lisp (same but more abstract), haskell (if you want to focus on type systems) etc.

If the goal is to enable web designers to improve their skills, then obviously javascript is the way to go.

I would advise you to stuck to:

"Start simple. Build complexity on top of it."

JS with its prototype based inheritance is just to complex to begin with it. IMHO a good programming class should start low-complexity, low-level (C-console - as you already do - for example) and slowly move up to high complexity, high-level (C++ OOP, JS, PHP, etc.) - if you can somehow meaningfully connect the steps inbetween, that's a huge plus factor. That's a lot more important then teaching the latest hype-language IMHO.

Teaching more then one language (if there is enough time for it) can be particularly usefull to show the different approaches the languages take: interpretation vs. compilation, strong vs. weak typing, OOP vs. functional, class vs. prototype based inheritance, etc.

I would like to tell you how I was introduced to development ¹ - I really enjoyed it and I think it was a well thought concept and kept the class highly motivated at any step:

• We started with a lot of theory building (compilers, debugging, etc). and then slowly begun building c console apps.
• In the next step we were handed a RFID reader connected via RS232 to write an access-control software based on RFID cards (--> somewhat introduction to low-level component communication).
• We then added a database for logging and user management purposes (--> entry-level introduction to SQL).
• Afterwards our goal was to build a GUI to add/edit the user-base and train/program cards (--> introduction to IDEs using Borland C++ Builder)
• We then got a second reader and were told the two should work together and one should centrally handle the authentication (--> introduction to socket programming).
• ... (There were a few more steps, but I don't want to bore you - I guess you get what I'm trying to point out) ...
• The final project was switching from C/C++ to PHP² to build a dynamic website to control the system via a webinterface (the PHP app spoke via TCP socket to the control server build earlier).

What I would like to point out: It was one big project from the (simple) start to the end, always stacking more complex parts onto the previous ones³.

(¹) - In my 3,5 years vocational education to a system-administrator - so programming wasn't our main study goal.

(²) - The step from C to PHP is in particular very easy, because they share a lot of the syntax.

(³) - Which of course often showed the limitations of the previous simple solutions.

JavaScript is a horribly poorly designed language, with a whole bunch of weird gotchas. I would avoid it as a first teaching language. I'd also avoid C. I think it's complexity and opacity hides the concepts you're going to want to concentrate.

I'd prefer Python. It's high level enough to make it easy to focus on core concepts, has some high quality accessible tools that mean you can introduce the debugger early on, and the immediate mode means that it's easy to "play" in it which helps a lot with learning.

However, since these students are intended to go on to C# why would you not start with that? It's a pretty good language to write in, the tools are excellent and you can start by building really usable things early on.

I think it depends on how rigorous you want to be with your intro courses, Khan Academy has a programming section that uses Javascript to teach programming concepts and it works pretty well because you hand wave quite a few things to start doing 'cool things' (that are generally handled by external frameworks or HTML5 APIs) and learn the basics of variables, functions, parameters, loops, etc.

If you want to talk about inheritence, data strutures, and scoping though Javascript may get in the way instead of making things easier... You'll also have to defer diving into types and generics because you just won't have them.

I'm surprised no-one has mentioned Java as an alternative yet -- the CS program at the school where I went started with Java, then moved to C with some assembly before branching out into other languages.

I don't really like Java, but I thought it was a useful starting point for learning because:

• it uses C style syntax (unlike Python)
• it lets you start out thinking in an object oriented mindset (unlike C or Javascript)
• it's type system is pretty standard and easy to understand
• it doesn't require manual memory management (like C or even C++)
• it generally avoids a lot language specific paradigms or problem areas, examples include: list comprehensions and tuple assignment in Python, prototypal inheritance and scoping oddities in JavaScript, extension methods and delegates in C#

C# and Java are both fairly similar, but cross platform support for the CLR was not very mature when I started taking classes -- though this has been improved recently.

I also took the Udacity intro to programming course in Python and thought it was really quite good as well... and Python is usually just fun to write small programs with.