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Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2013 21:07:31 -0500
Subject: Re: Experiences/guidance on teaching Python as a first programming language
From: Larry Martell <larry.martell@gmail.com>
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On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 8:42 PM, Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> wrote:
> In article <a34ada67-aa04-4f4d-b26d-e941cee03c4c@googlegroups.com>,
>  rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Kernighan and Ritchie set an important "first" in our field by making
>> "Hello World" their first program.
>
> Yup.
>
>> People tend to under-estimate the importance of this:
>> Many assumptions need to be verified/truthified/dovetailed
>> starting from switching on the machine onwards for this to work.
>
> At the time that they wrote it, very few people who used computers ever
> got anywhere near the power switch :-)

Nope. Long before that I was working on computers that didn't boot
when you powered them up, You had to manually key in a bootstrap
program from the front panel switches. (And no, this is not a takeoff
of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch.)