I go back and forth on this. A lot of people make good points.

In the end, my final answer is - yes. I say that because I believe it's the easiest programming language to get something working in. And getting something working is what motivates people to keep going.

If you sit them down and say 'well before you learn python you need to learn how a computer really works, here's an ASM x86 book', they're gonna probably read 10 pages, say this is boring, then go do something else. I think that because I went through that as a kid - I started reading a C++ book with no knowledge and gave up. It wasn't until I found qbasic and VB, by all marks a terrible language, that I really got motivated to learn and keep going because progress was so easy.

Python will teach you the basics - control flow, loops, variables, functions, libraries, etc. Those apply to almost every language. Then when you move to a different language, you at least know the basics and can focus on what's different or added that you didn't have or know before.

Yeah, Python or Javascript should be first languages for most people.

People like flashy things, and Python and Javascript are just 10x easier to get that working. Console I/O doesn't really cut it anymore.

Later on you can deal with memory allocation, bit-twiddling, 2's complement arithmetic, lower level OS details etc.