What Language?

I've read the course description but I still don't know what language we will be using.

Careful readers will have noticed that the particular language the course will use is not mentioned in the course description. This is by design, not accident. Like fashions programming languages come and go but the fundamentals change much more slowly. This course is decidedly about the fundamentals, and hopefully the course description will outlast current language fashions.

No, really, what language will we be using?

We'll be using the language Python.

Why Python?

Python was designed to be a teaching language. This means that concepts can be introduced one at a time, and lots of messy details delayed until they are needed.

Industrial-strength languages like Java and C++ are good for developing huge software systems, after all that's what they were designed for, but they are problematic as first languages. For instance in Java to write a very simple program, one that just displays the message "Hi" on the screen, the code would look like this:

class myfirstjavaprog
{  
        public static void main(String args[])
        {
           System.out.println("Hi!");
        }
}

and in C++ it would look like this:

#include <iostream>
int main()
{
    std::cout << "Hi!\n";
}

As you can see in Java and C++ there are a lot of concepts that have to be explained (e.g. in Java: class, public, static, void, main, String, arg[], System.out.println) before one can write even a very simple program.

In Python the program is just:

print( "Hi!" )

which is self-explanatory.

If you're still not convinced think about learning to fly. Your goal might be to fly 747s or F14s but you don't learn to fly on those planes because they are too complicated, and too unforgiving of mistakes. You learn to fly in a small Cessna. Once you have mastered the principles of flying you move on and upwards. Interestingly the charms of Python are so seductive that some programmers never leave it (it is for example one of only three internally supported languages at Google).

(It's also free in both* senses and available across most platforms.)

And there's this... 😀

[*]"free as in beer" and "free as in speech" see Wikipedia or just Google "free as in beer".