[kls]

If it where me and I where starting out I would get an Arduino board and a book on C/C++ development for Arduino. The reason I would do this is because it is very much like the early days of PC development where you are closer to the hardware and the feedback loop is quick, it also cuts away the layers and layers of stuff that can be distracting in a less focused segment. While working through learning to develop on the Arduino I would start reading foundational theory books as the theory will start to click with what you are doing. From there once I had a good grasp of C/C++ and what is going on in the hardware, I would learn a Lisp and start reading the deeper theory books on the various algorithms and start implementing those algorithms in Lisp. To me this will give you the most well rounded foundation in CS that you can get, you will learn two major branches of languages and you will be close to hardware in the beginning.

[fuzzypickle]

Would a Basic Stamp kit (from Parallax) be similar enough?

[kls]

So long as it has a C compiler it would be fine, the big point is that you want to manage memory as you want to understand how the memory and the hardware is managed. I personally like to have people learn by doing and then read the theory afterwards. For me at least the theory sticks better after someone has witnesses it. My recommendation was because you said that you want to learn computer science and to me that is the best way to do it. If you just want to learn how to program then my recommendation would be entirely different. But if you want to learn computer science then getting closer to the hardware will help you see the theory. To get closer to the hardware their is no better language than C, well you can do Assembly but at least with C you can learn higher order software only concepts that would be difficult to learn in Assembly.

[fuzzypickle]

Got it. I'm already looking into it.

[d1plo1d]

Basic Stamps are also simple to program however if you have the choice I would recommend the Arduino. The difference being that with an Arduino you are learning in the C programming language from day one which is a very useful and powerful language in use in a number of fields including Game Development. By comparison the Basic Stamps are programmed in PBasic which is not used outside of Basic Stamp programming (and similar Basic languages such as Visual Basic and QBasic are outdated / no longer in wide usage).

On a related note Hackerspaces tend to be great places to meet other programmers and many of them have quite active Adruino communities. http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces

EDIT: grammer

[fuzzypickle]

Ok that makes perfect sense. I know basic has been largely set aside for quite some time now and I always wondered what the point of learning a useless language was... this is the kind of stuff that I am trying to avoid wasting time on.

[kls]

While basic is a good language to learn the (pardon the pun) basics of programming, it's not a great language to learn computer science if that is your goal. For that I think the best two languages you can learn are C and then Lisp. Neither are huge languages as far as number of jobs go but both are fundamental and foundational languages. Mastery of both will allow you to master any other language quickly. C will help you understand the hardware and Lisp will help you understand pure software CS theory that is why I recommend C first and then Lisp, you want to build a foundation, then layer on from that foundation and the best way is to work from the hardware up. Once you understand how the hardware is controlled by the software, it makes it very easy to see how to optimize code when you are dealing with what looks like pure software problems.

The Arduino board has a lot of support and following, so that is why I recommended it, and it supports other languages as well so as you grow and learn new languages you can use your knowledge of the board to learn new languages on. If you find a different board that you like though and it has a C compiler then it will suffice, but Arduino does have a huge community that tend to help each other out.