What programming language would you recommend for teaching to non-technical people that use a variety of different OSes? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by communism@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I'm going to be delivering an online intro to programming session to a non-technical crowd who will be "following along at home". Because it's online, I can't provide them with machines that are already set up with an appropriate development environment.

I'm familiar with Linuxes and BSDs but honestly have no idea how to get set up with programming stuff on Windows or macOS which presumably most of these people will use, so I need something I can easily instruct them on how to install, and has good cross-platform support so that a basic programming lesson will work on whatever OS the attendees are running. Remember they are non-technical so may need more guidance on installation, so it should be something that is easy to explain.

My ideas:

C: surely every OS comes with a C compiler pre-installed? I know C code is more platform-specific, but for basic "intro to programming" programs it should be pretty much the same. I think it's a better language for teaching as you can teach them more about how the computer actually works, and can introduce them to concepts about memory and types that can be obscured by more high-level languages.
Python: popular for teaching programming, for the reasons above I'd prefer not to use Python because using e.g. C allows me to teach them more about how the computer works. You could code in Python and never mention types for instance. Rmemeber this is only an intro session so we're not doing a full course. But Python is probably easy to install on a lot of OSes? And of course easy to program in too.
Java: good cross-platform support, allows for teaching about types. Maybe a good compromise between the benefits outlined above for C and Python?

Any opinions?

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[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago

While they're far from mainstream, they're definitely languages worth learning. And I'd argue that learning functional style first gives you a much better intuition regarding state management which makes you a better imperative programmer as a result. It's much easier to go from functional to imperative than the other way around.

I mostly work with Clojure myself, and it's pretty easy to set up with VSCode and Calva plugin. There's also a lightweight runtime for it that doesn't require the JVM which is great for a learning set up. You just run bb --nrepl-server and then connect the editor to it as shown here. From there on you can run code and see results right in the editor. This is a good overview of what the workflow looks like in practice.

Also have some beginner resources I've used to train new hires on Clojure.

Introductory resources

High level overview https://yogthos.github.io/ClojureDistilled.html
core functions explained visually http://blog.josephwilk.net/clojure/functions-explained-through-patterns.html
An Animated Introduction to Clojure https://markm208.github.io/cljbook
Interactive tutorial in a browser https://tryclojure.org/
Interactive exercises http://clojurescriptkoans.com/
Notebooks with introductory examples https://github.clerk.garden/anthonygalea/notes-on-clojure
Interactive book https://www.maria.cloud/
Clojure style guide https://github.com/bbatsov/clojure-style-guide
Clojure macros https://clojure-doc.github.io/articles/language/macros
Puzzle Based Introduction to Functional Programming https://egri-nagy.github.io/popbook

A deeper dive

this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2025

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