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Thanks for responding! Do you still have in your notes the breakdown for each course whether it's CS0 or CS1? That would be good to put into the table in some form so the rest of us can make our own judgements about what that might mean. I don't disagree it's important, for many of the reasons you mention; I only really disagree with its characterisation as a majority intro language.

Indeed, I expect that when they're broken out, Python will be the overwhelming top choice for CS0, and a respectable second in CS1; but then, that's not as big a change as you might think. I'd be surprised if Java was ever a majority or even a plurality in CS0 courses. One subgroup of what you're calling CS0---the ones focussed on programming, often called a "service" course and targeted at engineering and science majors---have long been using things like C or Matlab, and never really had a strong movement towards Java. The other subgroup, what I'd call the "true" CS0 (i.e. based on what the ACM/IEEE curriculum guidelines used to call CS0) may have had no programming at all, or if they did, a short unit in a relatively lightweight language, certainly not Java.

Basically, the things that make for a good language in either kind of non-majors course are not always the same as what makes for a good language in a intro-for-majors course. That doesn't make the non-majors course unimportant and it doesn't mean that decisions are made hastily, but it's still not super helpful to conflate the two.

great suggestions. sadly i am limited by time and bandwidth. this was a weekend hack that i did by myself, so it's unclear how much more rigorous i can make the analysis. i'll try to incorporate some lightweight edits for clarification, though.

Given your work on modifying the Python VM, I'd love to hear your opinions on how it could be augmented to support CS0 students.

How prevalent is the REPL in CS education?

Does perceptualization play a role?

wow great questions! right now www.pythontutor.com is my ongoing effort to support Python CS0/CS1. REPLs are important for live programming via trial-and-error. see: http://pgbovine.net/teaching-librarians-programming.htm

ideally you want to mix the best of both worlds. here's a prototype demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3oarDuZPL0

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