I'd say it depends on what the newbie's end goal is. Because many people may use programming for higher level things - like using Matlab to process physics experiments' data.
> I'd say it depends on what the newbie's end goal is.
Some newbies have specific goals, some don't. When I was a newbie, my goal was to learn some programming. I started off with C++, which I don't think is very suitable for newcomers.
