I remember teaching myself some BASIC in late primary / early high school. But I passed on studying it properly because the computer course at high school was n

I remember teaching myself some BASIC in late primary / early high school. But I passed on studying it properly because the computer course at high school was notoriously weighted towards masses of work and poor input into the end of school results [1]. So I missed the boat to bigger and better languages (for now at least). Actually, on reflection that's not entirely true. In the past few years I've found work-related opportunities to teach myself some basic HTML. And iirc, the canonical 'How to become a Hacker' document [2] encourages the use of HTML as just what the OP is asking for - a basic language that teaches kids how things fit together. Sure, it's more complicated than BASIC, but in the Facebook era being the kid at (primary) school who can build his own webpage is perhaps not dissimilar to me being the kid at school who could build games with curse words in them. No Commodore 64 required. [1] My state's school system weighed the grades you received in any course against the overall skills of that course cohort when compared to the rest of the state on a standardised test. So I received much higher results from taking Drama (full of very smart kids at my school) than I would have taking IPT (full of average students, and harder workload). No comment on which cohort may now be more successful, but that was the choice at the time. [2] http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html