[stevenameyer]

I think an interesting way to talk about programming that may be quiet successful for people who are younger is to try and strip away the sytax of language, and instead focus on the semantics. It would allow a person to develop a deep understanding of core concepts such as different data structures and algorithms without being bogged down in the minutiae. Once I think there is a solid foundation in the general concepts I think it would be much easier to transition from language to language since they already understand the semantics of what they are trying to do and simply have to focus on the sytax to accomplish it.

Now this has the potential to lead to disintrest since they wouldn't have the ability to create something and receive the instant feedback of their hard work. But I do feel like it may be an easier way to lead them into it without throwing them into the deep end of language specific syntax which i would imaging feels pretty dense and impenetrable to a lot of people starting out.

As well it would be pretty easy to create word problems or games that would help them develop the general understanding. Something like the following problem:

There is a 100 story building and you have two identical eggs. You need to figure out the highest floor that you can drop one of these eggs from without it breaking. Once an egg has broken you can never use it again. How would you go about figuring this out using the fewest possible drops possible? What if the building was 1,000,000 floors tall?