On Friday, 17 October 2014 at 08:33:46 UTC, bearophile wrote:
The IDE support is probably a bit better with Java/C#
The importance of the IDE for the first language is
controversial. I think it's not so important.
Perhaps it depends on the person and the language, but I would
think autocompletion hints and getting visual cues of syntax
errors important.
Error messages with line numbers can be overwhelming, hard to
understand and discourage experimentation. Newbies often make
many syntactical errors.
Even when doing interactive stuff in python I find ipython a lot
more convenient than regular python. Insepecting a class by
hitting tab is very useful for learning I think.
and using a statically typed language as your first language
has advantages,
While no one has determined scientifically that you are right,
I too believe that static typing has some advantages for a
first language. I think there are no perfect first languages.
That's probably right, because motivation is the most important
factor. So even matlab can be a nice environment for learning if
it fits your interests.
In general I think Dart could turn into a nice language for
beginners. It is dynamic and "a bit forgiving", but has static
checking and you can see the results right in your browser (and
debug it). But I think the IDE should be mandatory…
