I also first learned to program in TI-BASIC, on a TI-83+ in 6th grade, and I did it prolifically for the next four years. Learning programming at that age was a

I also first learned to program in TI-BASIC, on a TI-83+ in 6th grade, and I did it prolifically for the next four years. Learning programming at that age was a huge advantage when I "officially" learned later: even though TI-BASIC only has 26 variables and no subroutines, flow control is basically the same, and it gave me an intuitive understanding to how programming languages work. Also, TI-BASIC made it so easy to display graphics, just by using the 'output' function or plotting to the graph. I think a huge turn off to beginner programmers is the amount of material you have to learn before you can do simple stuff like that (I remember looking for a "draw pixel" function in Java, only to learn to my dismay that I had to choose a GUI toolkit and create a window first). The ease of using the TI API made it addictive, and it lured me into programming for hours at a time in school.