Interesting. Python is my go to teaching language. It beat the snot out of learning programming with Java. As a newbie, what does "public static void main" mean? So what's your choice for a teaching language? Maybe Lua or Scheme? They seem to have few surprises which is good for teaching.
BASIC, for explaining the fundamentals of imperative programming. Its weakness as a "real" language is its strength as a training language.
Then Scheme, once they feel straightjacketed with BASIC; it will teach them what abstraction is and how to break code into chunks. It should be a bit of a lightbulb moment. They also get a type system.
Finally, Julia, once they get sick of the parentheses and difficulty of building "real" programs (you'll do a lot of DIY FFI to use standard libraries in Scheme). From this they will also learn array programming and the idea of a type hierarchy.
The only trouble with this curriculum is the student will be completely ruined for ever programming in C or Java. They will not have learned to tolerate the requisite level of tedium, or even programming without a REPL.
