> I would be hard-pressed to think of a worse first language than C. You want to introduce people to the concepts of programming, which means abstractions and high-level thinking. C forces you to think in terms of the computer and its memory, which is just the opposite.
People should learn two programming languages at the same time, a very high level one such as Python, and a very low level such as C. Combining the top-down and bottom-up approaches to learning, simultaneously, yields the best results for most people. While learning Python, someone can begin to look inside the abstractions and get a feel for algorithmic complexity and such stuff. While learning C, someone can see how to use it to build an OS such as Linux.