[SolarNet]

Tell me you haven't read the article (or used racket) without telling me.

> I believe that an intro course should get students coding since the first major hurdle is learning how to construct any kind of program at all. The switch to a more "employable" language isn't going to make education worse.

None of this is the issue at hand. The switch to python is because industry uses it. The article correctly makes the point that racket was intentionally designed to get students coding as easily and quickly as possible. It has multiple steps of teaching languages for exactly that purpose, introducing concepts in ways that let students grapple with them one at a time in an interactive environment.

Meanwhile in python complex topics like duck typing, object oriented methods, exceptions, the distinction between iterables and lists, how to use a command line/terminal or how to configure an IDE, and so on must be covered before people can start writing code for the exercises. Racket is streamlined for beginners.

[lazyasciiart]

> Meanwhile in python complex topics like duck typing, object oriented methods, exceptions, the distinction between iterables and lists, how to use a command line/terminal or how to configure an IDE, and so on must be covered before people can start writing code for the exercises.

No, they dont have to be at all. You might as well suggest you need to learn the JVM before writing a line of Java.

[wombatpm]

Python supports imperative, OO and functional programming paradigms. And to start you can use any text editor, an IDE is not required. In fact you can start working in the REPL right away, in which case you need a terminal and the command “Python”.

[Jarwain]

All of that except for working in the terminal, could probably be considered higher level

[sorawee]

To quote the above person: "tell me you haven't read the article without telling me".

You thought that supporting multiple "programming paradigms" is a nice thing, but it's the opposite for teaching beginning student. Experienced programmers want expressivity/customization/choices to do whatever they want. That's not what newbies need when they get stuck on an assignment.