Python is the best beginner language as of 2022
In short: It's useful commercially once you have learned it. It is easy to get started, no IDE required. It is extremely popular and easy to get help with. Python is useful commercially I was asked this week by somebody keen to begin programming where to start. Python was somewhat of a surprising choice for me since my weapon of choice is generally C#, but there you go. When I went to university in the 1980s, the languages they taught us were mostly "languages for learning" like Pascal. As a commercial proposition, it wasn't until the release of Turbo Pascal that any kind of commercial work appeared but we were learning Pascal on a VAX. While it was OK for teaching the basics of structured programming, it was very poor at preparing us for the meat and potatoes land of C or assembly and didn't have any object orientation. The course did skim over Lisp at one point and we eventually ended up at C in the third year. In defence of the teaching ch...