[sema4hacker]

If this is a one-school-year course then you have time to cover a tremendous amount of ground. Looking back on when I first learned programming, I would say the things that helped the most were (1) writing code as soon and as often as possible, (2) starting with a relatively simple language, (3) being given snippets of code and having to choose which of 3 or 4 possible outputs was the correct one, (4) being given working programs and having to enhance them (eg, add a language feature to a simple compiler, or add transactions to a simple database, or enhance a shopping cart on a web page, or modify a simple text editor, etc.), (5) programming a game, (6) being given pieces of code and having to identify the bug.

[aaron5]

Thanks! For me #1 is really important too. I think just trying, especially with software, is so important. The language is one I'm thinking about - some of my students are self-studying AP CS which is centered on Java, but that language seems more difficult to start building things you can see (as opposed to just HTML/javascript) but maybe I'm just not as versed in it.