Introductory Programming with Python

This paper describes a new course introduced at Otago University in 2009, called ";Practical Programming in Python";. The course is intended as a first course in programming and uses the excellent programming language Python. Python was chosen because at an introductory level it is simple, has very few unexplainable concepts, and immediate feedback is possible. Despite these attributes, the language and language environment is as useful for practical programming tasks as any other language. We describe the principles used for designing the course, the curriculum and structure of the course, and the student outcomes.