I find this completely impractical. Programming is hard for people to learn. They're juggling all sorts of new concepts and ideas. It's hard for them to remember the terminology, the data structures, the ways in which functions work, or even when and if they should use functions. Teaching them two languages simultaneously would be far more confusing than helpful.
I'm all in favor of learning different approaches and different languages. But for someone without any background to learn two languages simultaneously would be making it more difficult, not less.
I agree with this. I think its a great way to understand how those new concepts and ideas work in two different universes. Its helped me separate and understand how core ideas and concepts work and how they can work different.
People should learn two programming languages at the same time, a very high level one such as Python, and a very low level such as C. Combining the top-down and bottom-up approaches to learning, simultaneously, yields the best results for most people. While learning Python, someone can begin to look inside the abstractions and get a feel for algorithmic complexity and such stuff. While learning C, someone can see how to use it to build an OS such as Linux.