Python as Language, for Beginners

In the CACM:   A look at Python, a computer language now often used for analytics, and increasingly taught in schools.   For a techno piece, quite thoughtful.  Have always thought about the differences in expression between natural and human language.  Learning Python is not much different from learning other computer languages now less used, like Pascal or PL/1.   It expresses algorithms and communicates with data.  It describes effect much more precisely than human language.

" ... The way Taylor Poulo sees it, learning to code in Python is comparable "to learning Latin and romantic languages." Once someone grasps the logic behind Python, the concepts can be more easily transferred to other languages, maintains Poulos, a senior majoring in industrial engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). "Once you get comfortable thinking in a different type of logic and using different words, it's much more comfortable to learn new things," she says, adding that she was required to take three computer science classes at Georgia Tech, all in Python. "Python did that."

Python, an open source scripting language, has become the most popular introductory teaching language at top U.S. universities—Georgia Tech among them—according to a recent survey by Philip Guo, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Rochester. Guo decided to conduct the research after noticing anecdotally over the past few years that Python was replacing languages such as Java as the de facto introduction to programming class in more and more computer science classes at universities around the country. ... "