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From a clear technical perspective, what would be easier for an amateur to learn and be immediately productive in: Python or C?

I am not looking for answers based on hype or marketabillity, just plain technical advantages for amateur developers

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this question bad subjective but if you define what you mean by productive then it would be too localized... I do not think this question is salvageable... Neither/Either/Both. – Chad Nov 1 '11 at 16:03
Well it does ask for solid technical reasons from a specific viewpoint (amateurs). It could be productive, if answers are within the limits posed by the question and not stuff like "Python is better, just because". – Yannis Rizos♦ Nov 1 '11 at 16:06

closed as not constructive by ChrisF♦ Nov 1 '11 at 16:04

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Well python or C are hardly comparable and it will depend on what you want to achieve. But no boubt python allow to faster devellopement if execution speed isn't an issue.

Python is an high level language. It means that you don't really need to know what the computer is really doing to build a program (even if it can help). Plus, you'll be in situation where things are safe. It means that your program will work or fail with an understandable error (most of the time) message and in repeatable way. In addition, python identation make usually the code more readable, which is better if you want to ask help. (C can also be indented in a nice way, but this isn't enforced by the language, so beginners code ends up being unreadable most of the time).

C on the other side is close to the hardware. It means that you have to understand how the computeur work in addition of the language itself to use it. Plus, you'll face many unreliable behaviours and unclear error message, sometime in a non repeatable way. Exemple goes from buffer overflow to usage of unitialized variables. This will usually lead to a segmentation fault, or just mess up a part of your memory and crash the application in a totaly different part when thoses messed up data are used.

Thoses part of C are intentionnal. This give the compiler rooms for optimisation, and being close to the hardware allow you to use it to its maximum effisciency. But this is definitively harder for a beginer.

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Yes, but why?.. – Alex Nov 1 '11 at 16:03
@Alex > is it clearer now ? – deadalnix Nov 1 '11 at 16:27

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