Call me old school, but I would start off with Basic. If he was younger I would ...

aswanson · on Jan 10, 2009

BASIC will scar him. You might as well go with ruby or python, you get the same facility and start off with an extensible paradigm.

hello_moto · on Jan 10, 2009

Why?

I thought BASIC is very good to teach basic programming concept such as Loops, line-by-line execution, etc. Really, for a beginner, one must have that kind of mindset.

aswanson · on Jan 11, 2009

1)LET s =10 imparts no further understanding than s=10.

2) Numbering lines for programs is nonsensical.

3) Gotos are bad practice.

4) Most programs consist of more than 1 file.

5) Hello world is just as easy in any other (more useful) language.

Can't think of any more off the head right now, time to eat.

docmach · on Jan 11, 2009

Those are very imperative concepts and while imperative programming is good for some things, a language that teaches and allows for higher-level programming is probably a good idea. Languages like Python and Ruby allow functional and object-oriented programming which are becoming more and more common.

cmos · on Jan 10, 2009

It's tradition.

Didn't we all start with basic, even if just for a little bit?

aswanson · on Jan 11, 2009

Yes, and I wish it upon no youth to suffer such a perversion of what programming is again. Better to start them off in m68k assembly, at least they will learn something useful in terms of how a computer works.

limmeau · on Jan 10, 2009

Arduino has a nice simplified C language and a friendly and simple IDE. I recommend skipping the Basic Stamp.

Other than that, bare-metal programming on microcontrollers has the advantage that the boy can get a mental picture of the entire machine in his head; not so easy with an SDK of hundreds of megabytes for a modern high-level language.

bprater · on Jan 10, 2009

This is not a bad idea. Interfacing with hardware can be really fun, but basic enough that they can be creative.

"Hey, see if you can make those 8 LEDs do like the KITT car!"