First and foremost, teach them using something that creates something tangible quickly, this'll keep them interested. Second, depending on their personality, i

First and foremost, teach them using something that creates something tangible quickly, this'll keep them interested. Second, depending on their personality, it may give them more motivation to use a language actual software developers use. So all in all, good ideas are: * Python because of the load of libraries * Haskell because it's very human and has a great REPL * C because it's pretty easy, and gives them the feeling of something "serious" * Scratch because it's playish (This is from a perspective of an 18 year old who started at 11 with C and went through a lot of languages and various programming categories. I think those are things that would've motivated me even more if I had them.)