Re:Do what my father did (Score 1)

I think C would be a nice starting point. I know he's a teenager, but maybe in some years, if he's still interested in programming, he could learn some theory which will be a good complement to his skills as a programmer. I guess every programmer (whether or not he wants to study computer science), at least should learn the basics of algorithm analysis, theory of programming languages and programming paradigms, and some basics of interpreters and compilers theory. That way he will have enough tools to make an objective decision, rather than subjective preferences for any particular language, when he must choose a programming language in function of the different characteristics the problem he needs to solve. This knowledge and a good technical training on some of the most common programming languages (Java, C, C++, PHP, LISP, Prolog, etc.) will make of him a good programmer, with an integral view point of everything around the computer since the text code written until the machine code run by the processor. :P Cheers. - Edwin.