I dunno if there's a need for basic when there is so much easy functionality other places. When I started in the 80s, it was on my Commadore 64 and interesting

I dunno if there's a need for basic when there is so much easy functionality other places. When I started in the 80s, it was on my Commadore 64 and interesting to use, and a lot more straightforward than pascal or c when I was 10. But there are a lot of good tools without creating anything new. IMO, the real places for improvement are learning methods. My own idea has been to get my boy to start learning javascript via codecademy. We're seeing how that goes. He's 11 and more interested in minecraft (which, IMO, has a similar set of activities such as wikis and researching via message boards as my own day-to-day why-doesn't-this-work programming issues), but we'll see how this goes. The other thing that I did was to put together a desktop from parts with him over the holidays, which was a bit more fun than our usual yearly giant lego build, and I hope will give him an idea that these machines aren't magic-- they are put together, even if I don't have the skills to convey that at the circuit level.