Yeah, I was missing a word there but I couldn't think of the exact word. I believe Pascal and Basic were usually regarded as teaching languages as opposed to practical languages, so (while I'm against such line of thoughts) many colleges and universities decided to go straight into production languages because they will need them after graduation anyway. Later Java and Python were used as that kind of "practical first languages".
That makes sense. I've heard that sentiment about "teaching languages".
I wonder how Pascal ever became so popular given that it was regarded as a teaching language. It was clearly a contender in industry for a while; for example, Apple originally used Pascal for the Macintosh, and Turbo Pascal was extremely popular.
Nowadays, we don't even have "teaching languages". Students are taught something like Python, JavaScript, or Java.
