I have a 10 year old son who seems a natural to take an interest in programming. I tried starting him with a Basic interpreter cause that's how I started, and he struggled to stay interested - largely due to the non-graphical nature of the output.
The next thing we tried was Kodu from Microsoft (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/kodu/). He found that enjoyable - very visually appealing and you can get something basic but interesting running quickly. Getting something moderately complex became hard however due to the limited palette of design tools.
The next step was Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu/) which is a step down in eye candy but a step up in control. You get a lot more flexibility but it is still very approachable. Everything is visual as well, which makes it really easy to see what's happening. Scratch allows variables and lists, control flow structures, etc and thus gets into "real" programming.
However, Scratch has some big limitations, especially around instantiating new 'objects' at runtime. I think the next logical step forward is Stencyl (http://www.stencyl.com) though there's some additional layers of abstraction that are causing a little consternation.
I keep trying to push Python and Java, but for my son at least, not being able to start with something visual is a big drag. Maybe next year.
I just tried out Processing [0] right now, and it seems like you get a lot of control in it, and it looks pretty good on the eye candy side too. You could try that out.
The next thing we tried was Kodu from Microsoft (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/kodu/). He found that enjoyable - very visually appealing and you can get something basic but interesting running quickly. Getting something moderately complex became hard however due to the limited palette of design tools.
The next step was Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu/) which is a step down in eye candy but a step up in control. You get a lot more flexibility but it is still very approachable. Everything is visual as well, which makes it really easy to see what's happening. Scratch allows variables and lists, control flow structures, etc and thus gets into "real" programming.
However, Scratch has some big limitations, especially around instantiating new 'objects' at runtime. I think the next logical step forward is Stencyl (http://www.stencyl.com) though there's some additional layers of abstraction that are causing a little consternation.
I keep trying to push Python and Java, but for my son at least, not being able to start with something visual is a big drag. Maybe next year.