Why I don’t recommend python as a first programming language
This is all subjective, you do not have to take my word for it, however, I believe I have enough experience to speak about this, and I also believe other developers either talk or think about this.
First off, I am Shamsudeen, a software developer, and welcome to my python rant.
Now that I have chosen such a bold title, give me a few seconds to defend myself. I currently build mobile apps primarily; however, I have dabbled in the other sections of the software development sport. I initially started out with the web development basics, HTML, CSS and JavaScript and basically just grew my knowledge and changed interests up until this point. We’d come back to this aspect a bit later down in the article.
So back to Python. Don’t get me wrong, Python is a great language, easy to learn and quite versatile. Although the indentation wahala (issues) that comes with it and its programming language brothers can be very frustrating. The reason I would not recommend python is simply because there is no clear path for beginners or aspiring freelancers which is honestly why most people go into programming these days. When someone asks me what programming language to learn, my reply is “what path do you want to take?” which is always followed by a lecture on the different software development paths. As I said earlier that I started with the web development path, there are more paths in software development (which I’ll probably go into in more detail in another article. Let me know in the comments). Now in most of the paths, I believe excluding machine learning, python isn’t the primary language for them and for someone just going into programming, you should have a clear path on what path to take. That way, you would also be able to get freelance projects and potentially make money while learning to code.
Now, python isn’t completely bad, there are jobs where python is required such as backend web development, data science and others, but they aren’t jobs for beginners. You would rarely see someone needing a “junior” python developer or a python developer for a basic project. And again, when starting you would need a wide range of opportunities because the competition is quite harsh.
In summary, I believe if you want to learn python, either do it when you already have let’s say an intermediate knowledge on programming, or follow a clear path like machine learning while having the resolve of a narrower range of freelance or beginner jobs. Or better still, if you’re going down the path, make sure it’s during an internship for a company so you’d have a higher chance of getting retained.
Conclusion: As a beginner, instead of asking “what programming language should I learn?”, ask “what path should I take?”. That way it all just depends on which aspect you feel drawn to, and not why one programming language is better than the other.
Any objections? let’s discuss in the comment section.
