Dan, Have you thought about PostScript? It's an interpeted language [a deviant of Forth], has good documentation, many tutorial books [though mostly for its graphics features], widespread implementation (GhostScript plus half the printers in the world), and one can get up to speed very quickly for producing 2D graphics. And it doesn't have quite as many parentheses as LISP. From a programmer's standpoint its main disadvantages have to do with limits (single-precision floating point, 32-bit integers, array sizes limited to 2^16), but there are no reserved words so just about anything can be redefined at the expense of speed. --ms Daniel Asimov wrote:
My very bright 13-year-old nephew would like to learn computer programming (from scratch). He's quite familiar with using software, especially having used Midi music software for several years now.
At this point I don't think he has any specific goal of building a particular kind of software; he just wants to learn what computer programming is all about.
Has anyone had success with a particular language and/or book in similar circumstances? All suggestions are welcome.
At this point I'd like to give him something simple (so probably Java is out) but not too simple (so maybe Alice is out). But my mind's not made up about these, either.
Many thanks for your ideas.
--Dan
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