7d ago

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

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?

55 comments

surely every OS comes with a C compiler pre-installed?
You would be mistaken.
- Clearly OP has never used PC-DOS, MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows 11, MacOS, OSX, or AmigaOS, all of which do not come with a C compiler installed out of the box. Even Ubuntu does not have gcc or build headers installed in a default install (must install build-essentials package first).

C is full of complex paradigms and low level details that are great if you're learning computer architectures, but pretty bad if it's your first languages.
Python in the other hand is great to learn programming practices and for quick, non-optimized, easy scripts. I think it's less suited for more complex projects, but that's another thing. I honestly fon't think it's a great language, but it's easy to use and has pretty much a library for everything, that's why I think it's good to start and for simple things.
Java is also quite high level, so also good for beginners, but I've never used it so I don't know how easy is to setup (python is) and how easy it is to download dependencies (on python it is).
For your case I would say Python is best.
- Java is much easier to set up than Python is. For one Java works with mise, asdf, sdkman and numerous other automatic tool managers. Python on the other hand works with none of those. I wouldn’t recommend either for being easy to set up. Ruby is much easier than both (including my favorite language, Kotlin) and has just as many nice features and is much easier to read than Python.
  
  I don't know, my experience with python is "sudo apt install python3" on linux and "download the installer on windows and run it", I see many comments mentionting python difficilt to install but I really can't see why

Scratch, teach them Scratch. It runs in a browser, it's designed as a teaching language, teach them Scratch.
- The problem with Scratch is that you don't learn very much about computers with it. When I expressed I wanted to learn programming as a kid, I was directed to Scratch, and the whole time I was like "ok this is fun and cool, but when do I get to the real programming. I want to make an 'actual program'." You'd learn about how programming works on a very high level but you don't learn much about how things work "under the hood" which imo is the fun thing about learning to program.
  The best way I can articulate my goal is like how it feels to watch an edutainment video (think VSauce/Veritasium/Numberphile/etc)—you get a peek at some topic you didn't know about before and feel you understand how the world works a bit better. It's not the same thing as training someone up to be an expert, i.e. I'm not trying to turn these people into programmers (though if they're interested enough they can of course go away and pursue that in their own time).
  
  I'd also recommend something like scratch. If these people are non-technical as you say, they might not understand the concepts of directories on a computer, zipped files and so on. You'd be risking spending your teaching time troubleshooting the setup process and losing their interest before they ever get to write a line.
  Of course that's just based on how I interpreted your post, you know best their potential skill level.

python.
Its standard library is way better than lua in getting things done on your system. Imho a programming language that does not need internet-connection to a package manager to be useful is a big win.

Scratch?
- Second on Scratch. Then Python or Java.
  (Pretty sure windows doesn't come with any compilers anymore. Even if it did, it lacks an ide.)
- Yup thinking it's for kids is a misnomer one of the most powerful tools to understand concepts in real time.
  Thonny and Python are a pretty good successsion.

I'd be surprised if MS Windows came with a C compiler, tbh. But it'd be a bad choice for non-technical people anyway; it's not exactly a user-friendly language...
Python would've been my choice, but maybe also consider Lua (a lot of games include it as their scripting language, which might be an easy selling point for people)

Since you said non-technical I definitely recommend Python. It is easy to install and easy to get going with. It is feature ful. It is generous. You can do really interesting things without sweating details like pointers and segfaults.
If this was a technically minded crowd, especially students like in high school and in person, I would have said C

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.
Honestly, as much as I personally despise it as a language and as much as you probably shouldn't use it for large applications, JavaScript.
If ease of setup and platform compatibility are your absolute top priorities, nothing beats it. Every mainstream OS runs JavaScript, and it's already pre-installed in the form of a web browser. On any desktop system (and even mobile systems with some effort) you can use any text editor to write an HTML file with inline JavaScript and run it by just clicking it.
Python, the next best option IMO, still requires knowledge of how to use the command line, and on Windows, requires installation that is slightly more involved than installing a regular program (adding it to your PATH, etc). Python for beginners are also limited mostly to console apps, and making a GUI is much more difficult especially for new programmers. Again, you'd first have to teach them what a console even is and how it's actually still used by developers and is not a relic of the DOS days (something I've noticed non technical people tend to assume, they think GUIs made consoles obsolete). JS on the other hand is literally made to create GUIs on the web, meaning they will be able to create the kinds of software they're already used to interacting with, which is both easier for them to wrap their minds around and also more enticing. Someone with no technical experience might wrongly assume that a text only interface is like "training wheels" and what they're learning doesn't apply to "real" software.
More importantly, they will be able to show off what they built to their friends, without needing them to install anything or send source code or executables which can get blocked by social media filters. Services like Netlify will host your static pages for free, making sharing their work as simple as posting a link. Having a GUI is even more important in this regard, so they don't have to walk their friends through how to use a console app when they barely understand it themselves.
JS in the browser also has the benefit of being in a sandbox, meaning they can't easily interact with other parts of their computer like files or system configurations. This may seem like a disadvantage but for someone just learning what programming is, it's reassuring that they can't accidentally kill their OS or delete their files.
However, keep in mind that JS is pretty infamous for teaching bad habits that will have to be un-learned when switching to other programming languages (and so does Python TBH, though to a much lesser extent). It really depends on what kind of developers you want them to be by the end of this. For people just looking to casually make some interesting software they can show off to their friends, JS is probably the easiest way to do it. If this is meant to be the start of a path toward becoming actual professional developers, Yogthos's suggestion of Clojure or Scheme is probably better because those languages will teach much more rigorous programming and software design practices from day one.

What's your target audience ? An what's the goal ?
There is a difference between Giving a programming training to scientist/engineer who may need more than just Excel for data-processing/visualisation, and giving a discovery what programming looks-like for a general public, or people who want to do their own website.
For general public, the good-old "Logo" that kids learned programming with in the 70-90's is still great
for scientists engineer, I would go for python which is the de-facto standard for data visualisation/processing when performance doesn't matter
For a more foundation course, I think the everything is object approach in java can be pretty great
- What's your target audience ? An what's the goal ?
  Good questions. The goal is not to make new programmers but mostly to satisfy curiosity and help people learn about how the world works, specifically how computers work, and to feel more confident around tech. It's for a non-technical crowd. Mostly just to give them a taster/peek "under the hood".
  
  If it's a nontechnical crowd with no intention of using this knowledge in the workplace for actual programming, I'd agree with the other poster who recommended scratch: it's a visual, object oriented language, so there are hardly chances for typos, it's designed for learning, it runs in the browser. It's a great language for kids and older "first contacts"

I would suggest Go

I would suggest taking a look at Scheme or Clojure for somebody who has no development experience. The big reasons being that these are high level languages so you can focus on learning the actual concepts without all the incidental complexity of imperative languages. Scheme in particular was designed as a teaching language. The other aspect is interactivity, Lisps have a tight integration between the editor and the REPL and you can evaluate functions as you write them. This is incredibly helpful for learning as you can write a function, send it for evaluation, and see the result immediately. So you can play with code and get an intuition for how things work.
- That's a really interesting suggestion. I've not used either. I had the impression that those languages are kinda esoteric, but maybe I'll have a look.
  
  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
  https://www.braveclojure.com/foreword
  https://kimh.github.io/clojure-by-example
  http://mishadoff.com/blog/clojure-design-patterns
  https://aphyr.com/tags/Clojure-from-the-ground-up
- Speaking of Scheme, I would suggest Racket, which comes battery included and ready to go in ONE installer. Easy to install on any system, and has a decent text editor/IDE provided. Also, the documentation is great, but can be daunting at first.
  
  Seconded, I should've just said Racket really.
- My university chose to teach a pure functional lisp-like language without for loops as they very first programming course in the computer science program lol. Everyone who "already knew" how to program in Python/Java/JS/etc hated it (including me at the time) because it knocked us from the peak of the Dunning-Kruger curve into the valley of despair like everyone else.
  Took me years to understand the method to the madness and appreciate learning it.
  
  It's very frustrating to be in a situation where you know how to do something one way, but you can't do it like that and you have to learn a completely different way to do it. Feeling like a beginner again makes people feel stupid, and most people don't like that. But it really just means you're learning a new way to approach problems.

Python, definitely.
It's easy. Succinct. You can use any text editor. Has a huge community. Huge library.

Rust
- As a fan of Rust, NO. I think it would only discourage them, but I never tried teaching, so I might be wrong.
  Case in point - users that started out with Linux get used to Linux and its paradigms. Maybe it's the same???? Or maybe not.
  
  Tbh I think one of the main difficulties of Rust is that it works in ways that are quite unusual if you're used to other programming languages. So maybe that particular difficulty is eliminated for people who've never programmed before, but yeah, I imagine it probably is still not an ideal first language.

If there's no specific use-case (this is a general introduction, not Intro to Operating System Design) and this isn't academic Computer Science teaching, then certainly a scripting language.
Easy to learn, easy to use, and much more applicable for simple automation that benefits the people learning.
C is dangerous if someone doesn't take care. Java is verbose and personally I didn't enjoy it one bit. You said this is a non-technical crowd and you expect them to follow at home.

I suggest having your students install IntelliJ IDEA and using Java. A full blown IDE might be much but I can't think of an easier way to install a JDK and an editor suited for it.
- That might be a good idea actually. I think Java's a good balance of demonstrating a variety of programming concepts (I think Python obscures too much that would be good to learn about for a beginner), and telling them to install IntelliJ should be straightforward enough without needing to babysit too much the install/setup process.

Use Google Collab or another web hosted platform. If you're unfamiliar Google Collab is a part of Google docs that you can run Jupyter Notebooks on (and it's free). This avoids the need for anyone to install anything and means you can test materials in the same environment everyone will run against.
Additionally, Jupyter notebooks makes it easy to add markdown, so instructions can be in stylized format and the students can run the cells over and over again to see how the output changes in real time.
Lastly, I would lean towards python, but there are many different languages supported in Google Collab and similar web hosted tools.

Depends a bit on how much depth and which topics you want to hit. Scratch is easy to grasp and won't require any real effort to set up, but may make adults feel like they're being condescended to with its cartoony aesthetic, and might be a bit limited in how impressive you can make your demo. Python would require a bit of 'teacher's planning time' to set up an easy workspace in Google's collab tools and design a lesson, but could be used to show more depth if the students are the type to want/accept that depth, but don't mistake interest for readiness.
Time might also be important to consider as well. If you have only the one session to cram things into, it might not be a great idea to go deep, and definitely would be asking for trouble to try to install anything on all those machines. Non-technical people have a knack for finding the holes in your plan or taking far longer to do something that requires them to act individually, which leaves you scrambling to try to play remote tech support for the 5-50% who need it while the people who 'did it in one' get bored.
And first things last, Murphy's Law always applies to presentations. Just ask anyone at defcon. Even for people who are so tech-y they are teaching other tech people about tech, the demo might work 37 times the morning before your presentation, but it will fail on the 38th because that's when you're in front of the audience. Minimize your attack surface. When you are limited to one session, leaving them with a good, inspiring message that makes them want to keep learning is better than trying to info dump.
Good luck.

Python.
It's pretty easy to get going.
the debugger is very good. Being able to put a breakpoint and interactively fuss with it is so much better than print statements and crying
you can (and should) use type annotations, but they are optional
it's on most machines already, but you don't want to fuck with the system install of it. On Linux and Mac you can use pyenv or similar if the system came with a version you can't use. (Don't teach anyone python 2.)
the standard library is very good.
You could also do JavaScript, as that'll work on any modern browser. However, JavaScript is a deeply cursed language. It's really bad at like every level.
I don't recommend it unless your top priority is "it is definitely available everywhere" and "these are future web developers".

python or lua
i loved learning on lua, it is a little better to learn than python (less keyword, "end" instead of }, 1-index, less types) but python is waaay more prominent

I’m also going to lean on javascript. It’s practical and if the student produces something interesting, it’s rather trivial to distribute (with minimal risk from sharing).
There are various web-based tools as well, or going old school with locally edited files, the browser is also your debugger.
Creating visual content is easy and there’s multiple options for output that don’t rely on extra code for a full app.
Javascript also has that C-like syntax if you want curly braces and the like.

Python 100%. It's the most human readable and easiest to pick up, especially for a non tech person. It's easy to setup contrary to what I've read in the comments. Go to python.org install the latest version and that's it. The downloader includes Idle so no other ide is required, but I'd consider vscode as well. Either watch an install video or better yet do it yourself before going to class.
I think you need to highlight the differences between OSs when it comes to setup if you plan on having a mixed environment of systems. It will also affect the code you write, so to be thorough, you'll need to cover those differences as well.
Don't go low level like C. These people will die the first time they have to compile in terminal.
- You should read the Python documentation for how many ways there are to set it up. It’s not easy. It might be easy for a pro, but for a beginner it will be a nightmare. Python’s own documentation is thousands of words long for how to get it running correctly, it’s the exact opposite of what you want for beginners. And no it’s most definitely not the most human readable. They call it Ruby Prose for a reason.
  I’m not here to have a flame war over Python vs other stuff, but I’ve used both professionally for over a decade. Python is good at stuff, but being human readable by beginners and having good tooling are not even in its ballpark. It has syntax unlike any other modern language and its tooling is shite. https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2023/01/15/how-to-improve-python-packaging/
  
  For a basic setup to learn hello world and basic if/then logic, it's extremely simple to setup Python on Windows or Linux. For Windows, which I'm guessing every non technical viewer will be using, download the installer and hit next taking the default values. Open idle, type the very human readable, print("hello world"). Save and press f5. That's it no complicated setup.
  OP isn't talking about teaching a lesson where any confusing syntax will come into play. They are giving an intro to programming class. That's all about learning basic programming concepts which is done very easily in Python. You wouldn't teach a non technical first time programmer a ternary operator or a list comprehension. You'd teach them:
  undefined
  
  if a == 10: print("a = 10") else: print("a is not 10")
  and simple for loops
  undefined
  
  for x in range(10): print(x)
  I don't know about you, but to me that's about as human readable as it gets. No imports required. No extra packages. Just default python install and copy paste and this will work.
  There are other languages with minimal setup that can be used. OP could go as far as basic JavaScript in JS fiddle so no setup would be required. The basics of JavaScript are also very easy to read compared to a language like C where explicit typing is required. That can be a difficult concept for people that have never even seen code before. Python and JavaScript soften that blow. Once the concepts of if/then, loops, and functions are grasped it's much easier to pivot to other languages with more verbose syntax.
  I'm not here suggesting that Python is by any means the superior language of the universe, just that it's a very good option to learn with for it's entry level simplicity and syntax readability, which I've demonstrated.

I'm currently a college student studying software engineering, so by no means am I a professional (yet at least, lol). Nevertheless, I'll try to give what input I can.
Afaik and based on my own experiences, windows does not come with a pre-installed C compiler. (Win 11 Home at least) Also, I just honestly wouldn't recommend C anyways especially if it's for a non-technical crowd. It's great once you get the hang of it, don't get me wrong, but it's definitely not beginner friendly.
As for a "best choice" it's of course up to preference, what you're already familiar with, and what kind of programs you and your class plan on writing. If you want to use a language that can directly translate into a working environment, Python is a very beginner friendly option. If you want something slightly less forgiving, I think Java provides a good balance between having a lot of useful built in functions/methods and having some of the more "strict" (for lack of a better term) rules about syntax (semicolons, brackets, static variables) that you'll find in other languages. If you're just looking to teach programming concepts on a surface/conceptual level then honestly something like code.org or scratch is a great option (and it's where I got my start growing up lol)
As for setting up an environment, again, everyone has their own idea of the absolute best setup, and it's also probably going to differ at least somewhat depending on what operating system you're using. For my personal use I've mostly been using VSCode just because it's pretty easy to set up. Definitely worth mentioning though that VSCode comes with plenty of Microsoft Telemetry built in by default so if you want an alternative without that I recommend Code OSS (vscode built directly from source) or VSCodium (vscode but with MS Telemetry disabled and a different default extension marketplace)
The intro to computer science class I took (and am currently an aid for) at university (we used C) did all of their demonstrations using CS50.dev, which is an online environment maintained by Harvard. For the Object Oriented Programming course I took (Java) we used Eclipse.
Again, I'm still a student, so take everything here with a grain of salt. And if anyone sees anything they think deserves clarification/correction please let me know. I'm still learning lol.

Consider providing students with vm. Then you can set up distro however you want, and write short instruction on how to run it and you know that they going to get whatever you want them to have for the course. That's what i did several times. It helped a lot, because everyone's pc going to be slightly different, packages, libraries etc.

Ada programming language. Check alire

Javascript runs on almost any browser, has a built in debugger, and gives immediate feedback. You could probably teach someone on a Nintendo DS

Python
It's an amazing scripting language, and my goto for writing automation scripts.
It's the most lenient of the 3 with dynamic typing and managed memory. It'll let you learn the basics of reading / writing / running code as well as basic control flow and logic
C is also great to learn, as it teaches you how computers work at a fundamental level, but it's more stuff to learn up front, and can lead to some very difficult to fix bugs
Java is good as an "application" language. Being memory managed like Python, but statically typed like C. Static typing makes it easier to manage larger code bases

Mac is very similar to Linux in that it comes with bash (these days zsh) and a lot of the command line tools you’d expect on Linux, including gcc and python3 installed by default. You’ll want them to have a decent text editor with code coloring. Sublime is what I was taught to use in university.
Windows is more difficult. The command line is very different (it inherits from DOS instead of Unix like both Mac and Linux). It doesn’t come with Python pre-installed. I’ve generally installed git-bash when working on Windows. There are some Python libraries that work fine on both Mac and Linux but have issues on Windows.
You could look into VSCode which is a decent IDE that works on all platforms. Of course, an IDE can be a bit of an information overload for a beginner, especially something like VSCode that’s constantly pushing AI features and plug-ins.
- Mac is very similar to Linux in that it comes with bash (these days zsh) and a lot of the command line tools you’d expect on Linux, including gcc
  No it doesn't.
  The gcc command is a wrapper for clang, and the clang command is a stub that runs an executable used to install the "Xcode Command-Line Tools"
  It also uses the BSD coreutils, rather than the GNU coreutils present on most Linux distros. The two are only compatible up to functionality defined by the POSIX standard, and anything beyond that is an inconsistent mess.
  Windows is more difficult. The command line is very different (it inherits from DOS instead of Unix like both Mac and Linux). It doesn’t come with Python pre-installed
  If you limit yourself to not using WSL, sure. WSL 2 runs an actual Linux kernel with the same Linux executables you would find on any other distro.
  It's still Windows and full of telemetry and AI garbage nobody wants, but it somehow manages to have better Linux compatibility than macOS.
  
  I suppose my setup already has “Xcode command line tools” installed, so gcc works as expected. It’s been a while but IIRC the process for installing the command line tools is pretty self explanatory.
  I remember WSL being a whole process to setup, but it’s been a while, and as you might guess, I’m a lot more familiar with Mac than Windows.
  What I do know is I had to support a Python project on all 3 OSes and Windows was by far the hardest to get working. We were deliberately not using WSL for that scenario.
  
  If you limit yourself to not using WSL, sure. WSL 2 runs an actual Linux kernel with the same Linux executables you would find on any other distro.
  I mean yeah but I don't want to sit through instructing people how to set up WSL. I've only done it once years ago so maybe it's simpler now—I don't remember it being hard for me but for the average person I can imagine them getting confused at some point.

Absolutely do not use Python. It’s a nightmare to install on random computers and the majority of your time spent will be trying to get it working on everyone’s computer (that was my job at one point). As far as I remember, there isn’t a “good” C compiler that comes on windows and the one on Mac is missing some stuff.
I’d go with Ruby, it’s dead simple to install on every OS, easy to teach and learn, and doesn’t work differently across OSes. There’s an installer for it for windows and it comes installed by default on Mac (or it did? Maybe they stopped that).
- What?
  Linux: Install with whatever package manager you use
  Windows: download installer, run installer
  Mac: Idk, same as Windows I'd guess
  Then type python or python3 into your command line to check of it works. Run scripts from command line, too (to prevent stuff like file associations or shebangs)
  Any version >=3.10 is fine, the differences don't matter for a basic course. Venv or even pip is not needed either (again, basic course).
  
  If only it were that easy. Like i said, my job for years was literally deploying scripts and software to a fleet of machines including Macs and windows laptops. Every single install would have something go wrong, every single time.
- Python's installation part is now improved if you previously install uv.

Red-lang https://www.red-lang.org/
Arturo https://arturo-lang.io/
Rexx with the Regina compiler https://www.rexxla.org/rexxlang/index.srsp https://regina-rexx.sourceforge.io/
Pascal-P6
Oberon 07 using AntKrakov's compiler
etc.

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