First, make it fun. Teach through examples and explain stuff later. As interest grows, the desire to figure out the "why" also increases. For most people, "fun

First, make it fun. Teach through examples and explain stuff later. As interest grows, the desire to figure out the "why" also increases. For most people, "fun" is building something you can play with. Web development falls nicely into this category - even now I'd still recommend learning Ruby and then Ruby on Rails for a first language/framework. Ruby is a beautiful language and RoR lets a beginner make working prototypes without overwhelming them. Others might enjoy parsing large sets of data, making games, or other things. Figure out what they enjoy and the rest will follow.