[dromidas]

Really good (long) summary, zanny. That was what I had garnered from the article's musings. It's something I've thought about a lot myself actually. How would I give a child the opportunity to learn to hack or program if they wanted to? For me it started with c-64 basic cause it wasn't compiled, then visual basic when I was like 13... I guess C# or Java could probably be taught very easily, but it feels like starting out learning martial arts by teaching them advanced maneuvers. It feels like the wax on, wax off approach really is the wise course but showing them QBasic or something hardly seems like a step forward.

[zanny]

I'm sure if they have the right interest, they will investigate how these devices work. It isn't as nice as being forced into learning a lot of it by necessity of the tech (think TTY only devices) but I'm sure most who possess the correct spark might end up writing web apps instead of bash scripts.

[jiggy2011]

Maybe something like Lua? Has the added advantage for kids that it is used extensively in games as a scripting system.