Beyond DOS/Windows batch files which are terrible but indeed a language, my first "real" language was Turing ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_(programming_

Beyond DOS/Windows batch files which are terrible but indeed a language, my first "real" language was Turing ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_(programming_language) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_(programming_language) ). It was mainly used in Canadian high schools - at least it was when I was there at the beginning of the decade. I didn't like it but it had a full graphical environment that was pretty accessible to students. I liked that our particular IDE/interpreter was called WinOOT (Windows Object Oriented Turing) - OOT pronounced like the stereotypical Canadian pronunciation of about, "aboot". If that's not patriotic enough, it also had a built-in graphics function named drawmapleleaf.