Don't get me wrong, Python is head and shoulders above Java/C# or C/C++ as a teaching language. The complaint is that, as the educator, lab/tutorial time is being wasted on trivial syntax issues that would be non-existent given a more lenient parser or better tooling (preferably the latter).
If your goal is understanding data structures, algorithms, etc, then C is hideous. Explaining function prototypes, include headers, very unfriendly I/O, and I already mentioned the horrible syntax for for loops.
There's a reason most of the data structures/algorithms were in a second course at my university: It's because it took most of one semester for students to get a handle on the very basics of C syntax.
I’m saying that the C machine model would be an ideal introduction to pointers and registers and bit manipulation, and you could compare a C program with its compiled disassembly. Later you could get into in-line assembly and even processor intrinsics.
