I do not know where to ask this. This forum is linked from Python.org. So it seems just right.
I am going to teach a first-year university course in programming next year for students of mathematics (Bachelor and High School Teaching). Through all the years, I have used Java as the first language. The reason for this is that Java is as fast as C and very close to the basic syntax of C, but cross-system and with a huge library for all sorts of programming scenarios. Python was always rejected because it is too high level and abstract, hiding the basic concepts from the user. Going from Java to C is easy, but not so from Python to C. Python is also not well suited for basic real-world or numerical programming because it is at least five times slower than Java, and often even more performance is lost.
Now I am aware that there are nice and useful things like Numpy or Matplotlib, and even libraries for machine learning. Those are C in the background, and they don't exist in Java in that form. This inclines me strongly towards Python. But, in the basic course, this will never be reached. And I think for someone that understands basic commands, data types, and objects, it is fairly easy to learn the Python concepts necessary to use these libraries.
So, here is my question: What good reasons can you give to convince me to use Python instead of something basic like C or Java?
I am going to teach a first-year university course in programming next year for students of mathematics (Bachelor and High School Teaching). Through all the years, I have used Java as the first language. The reason for this is that Java is as fast as C and very close to the basic syntax of C, but cross-system and with a huge library for all sorts of programming scenarios. Python was always rejected because it is too high level and abstract, hiding the basic concepts from the user. Going from Java to C is easy, but not so from Python to C. Python is also not well suited for basic real-world or numerical programming because it is at least five times slower than Java, and often even more performance is lost.
Now I am aware that there are nice and useful things like Numpy or Matplotlib, and even libraries for machine learning. Those are C in the background, and they don't exist in Java in that form. This inclines me strongly towards Python. But, in the basic course, this will never be reached. And I think for someone that understands basic commands, data types, and objects, it is fairly easy to learn the Python concepts necessary to use these libraries.
So, here is my question: What good reasons can you give to convince me to use Python instead of something basic like C or Java?