BASIC on the Apple II was my first programming language and I loved it at the time. Once my kids are a little older, I'm going to start with Ruby. One thing tha

BASIC on the Apple II was my first programming language and I loved it at the time. Once my kids are a little older, I'm going to start with Ruby. One thing that was very helpful learning basic on the old Apple was that you could use the command line to examine variables and also program on the fly. This is similar to Ruby's IRB. Being able to tinker with a program without having to compile first is very instructive and most of all fun!