Comment Re:Teach the kids to program in Perl! (Score 1) 777
I would start them off with HTML. HTML offers instant gratification, as one only needs to reload a browser window to see the results of their coding. Single line text output from the command line will bore most kids. Building web pages with pictures, color, and different fonts is visually rewarding and would likely hold their interest much longer.
Once they are somewhat familiar with HTML, move them into PERL and CGI programming. PERL may seem awkward at first, but if they understand just a little bit of HTML, they will be able to build web pages using PERL and learn a very powerful computing language at the same time.
PERL is one of the most supported computing languages (if not the most supported), which is why I would want to teach the kids to program with this language. However, I would probably start them off with something that would likely hold their interest beyond the output of the hello world script.
