The first time I programmed anything I was like 8 or 9, on a 486. It was QBasic. The thing I really loved was visual stuff and audio stuff. Text to the scree

The first time I programmed anything I was like 8 or 9, on a 486. It was QBasic. The thing I really loved was visual stuff and audio stuff. Text to the screen, feh, I wans randomly placing circles, with random sizes and colors, and using that same stuff to also make my computer beep accordingly. I loved that. I honestly didn't get much beyond that, but it was pretty cool to make the screen change. Scratch is probably good for that. That said, I'd probably start with a language like ruby or python if I was going to teach somebody 12 or up, simply because he can continue to learn it.