Re:I've been teaching programming using Flash (Score 2, Interesting)

I'll second this. Flash may be a proprietary technology that has the ability to irritate the hell out of people on websites, but it's probably the best learning tool for budding programmers out there at the moment. As well as the basic animation, graphics, tweening, etc, there's real programming depth there now. With the newer versions of Flash and Actionscript 2.0, Flash has become more or less completely object-oriented, and most of the syntax is similar to that of C++ or Java. So not only is it a commercial skill that is viable in the jobs marketplace, it also teaches the basics of how to use fully-fledged object-oriented programming languages. The trick, of course, is to have it accessible to all without having to acquire it through warez channels... Macromedia, are you listening?