Khan Academy will use JavaScript to teach programming

Khan Academy is a non-profit project that offers thousands of free educational videos and courses in major scientific disciplines, from mathematics and physics to history and art history. Until now, the academy’s website has used Python as the language of instruction. It is often chosen for teaching programming, largely due to its uniqueness (“There should be one way and one way”) and transparency (“Explicit is better than implicit”), but for the first training language, it considers John Reisig ( recently transferred from Mozilla Corporation to the Khan Academy) is very important qualities such as accessibility and visibility. You can start programming in JavaScript in any browser without spending a second to install, besides, HTML5 and CSS are always at hand, and instead of boring traditional Fibonacci numbers and “Hello world” you can quickly build a simple game or at least draw something on canvas'e (hello turtles from the Logo).

In addition, JavaScript combines object-oriented and functional approaches and introduces the novice to the asynchronous programming style. Its tolerance for errors and the absence of a rigidly defined model of inheritance, for which JavaScript is often criticized, may well be an advantage for an educational language. However, this is a topic for a good holivar. What is more important - first to awaken an interest in programming and make the first successes feel, or immediately implant a strict “adult” approach? There is no definite answer. Pros and cons have both options.

But the prevalence of JavaScript - is a definite plus. Unlike a fully toy Logo or a primitive BASIC, this is a full-fledged language that confidently goes beyond the browser and penetrates servers, desktops and mobile platforms. Programming skills on it can be directly used in practice. Khan Academy plans to include in the course work with such libraries as jQuery, Processing.js, Box2D.js

Details - in John Rasig's blog and in this video:
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