Is D programming friendly for beginners?

[M.M.]

On Tuesday, 12 March 2024 at 18:03:43 UTC, Lance Bachmeier wrote:
> On Tuesday, 12 March 2024 at 17:03:42 UTC, Mike Shah wrote:
>
>> As a note, the 'which language is best for CS 1' debate has 
>> long been debated -- but at least in a school setting, I've 
>> found the quality/enthusiasm/encouragement of the teacher to 
>> be the most important aspect regardless of language choice.
>
> As someone that's been teaching beginners to program at a 
> university for a long time (but not in a CS department) I've 
> come to see the choice of language as largely unimportant. You 
> have to decide what you want to teach them and then eliminate 
> the languages that aren't suitable. D is one of many languages 
> that would work with the right content. Other languages, like 
> C++, add unnecessary overhead and thus should not be used.
>
> It's often said "X is a complicated language" but that's the 
> wrong way to look at it. You're teaching a set of programming 
> concepts, not a language. The question is how well a particular 
> language works for learning those concepts.

I was always wondering about this debate on a suitable "first" 
programming language in a CS curriculum. I largely observe one 
dividing point: to start with a strongly-typed language or not. 
(After that, it probably does not matter so much which language 
is chosen; alas, it should be available on Windows, Linux, and 
Mac OS). Do you observe similar sentiment in the discussions in 
the university settings?