Learning Programming In a Post-BASIC World

ErichTheRed writes "This Computerworld piece actually got me thinking — it basically says that there are few good 'starter languages' to get students interested in programming. I remember hacking away at BASIC incessantly when I was a kid, and it taught me a lot about logic and computers in general. Has the level of abstraction in computer systems reached a point where beginners can't just code something quick without a huge amount of back-story? I find this to be the case now; scripting languages are good, but limited in what you can do... and GUI creation requires students to be familiar with a lot of concepts (event handling, etc.) that aren't intuitive for beginners. What would you show a beginner first — JavaScript? Python? How do you get the instant gratification we oldies got when sitting down in front of the early-80s home computers?"

Early 80's?

[numb7rs]

"How do you get the instant gratification we oldies got when sitting down in front of the early-80s home computers?"

By using a language that has lasted through that time to this one: Fortran.

Fortran is still one of the most widely used languages in scientific applications, and is a great starting point for beginners.

Re:what I did

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Are you implying that my habit of using "elif" in natural-language conversation may be marking me out as some sort of deviant geek weirdo?

Re:what I did

[DrXym]

I'd recommend Brainfuck [wikipedia.org]. It has no library at all to confuse beginners and only 8 commands.