Good language for a 12yo to learn with?

[Macpc?]

Well I think Python is good for beginner, It's very clean and easy understand. BTW C and BASIC are old and outdated for a 12yo, isn't it?

 

[Obsoleet]

Good point. By the time the kid turns 21, C will be over 50 years old.
C is eternal, or has been up until this point and certainly the low-level language if you want to learn one. C11 isn't the C from 40 years ago. It's just not going to be relevant enough for most tasks, going forward. It also won't be going away, which is why it's still the low level language to learn if you so desire.

C was developed in an era where extracting every bit of performance out of your hardware was mandatory. Today, that kind of performance tweaking doesn't matter as long as you have browser that runs on it. To put that into perspective, I'm typing this in a browser, in a virtual machine right now, on a ~5 year old CPU.

As far as we can tell, Javascript is the new C. Yeah most of us don't like it, but its time to bite the bullet and give up resistance IMO. Python is good to learn on, but Javascript is a must-have unless you want to render yourself obsolete. I suck at JS myself, but it's a true statement.

 

[bdazzled]

Obsoleet:

Thank you very much for the pointers. They came along seemingly at the right time, and appear to be just what the doctor ordered. He's been working on his game and making progress with it. A few teardowns and rebuilds, debugging and polishing, starting to realize why I'm always pushing good old pencil-and-paper on him (for design, and keeping track of what plugs into what.)

Anyway, he picked up a C# book at the library the other day, and has been digging his way into that as well. I have no objection, of course. But privately, I would also like to see him focus on the Python a bit longer, to establish a solid foundation and then to start seeing what kind of cool things he can build on it. Just like anything, when you are comfortable enough with your tools and know what they are capable of, then you can really let your imagination take over.

So I think your suggestions are going to catch his eye and lure him deeper into Python. I'll encourage him to go through that course as well. Seems tailor-made for his interests.

Much obliged.

 

[Obsoleet]

I was hoping it would help.

If he's serious about C# (a great language to know as well), hopefully he'll stick with it and really learn all the fundamental concepts there that are in LPTHW. I've never used this personally but this might give him a way to at least get started without learning how to use Visual Studio Express. http://scriptcs.net/ It work like how Python works, simple and down to the core of programming.

If you are sold on Python, you can remind him that it is a lot more crossplatform oriented, so if he ever buys a Mac or installs Linux his code that runs on Windows today will still work. That's a strong benefit, especially when the server world is as diverse as it is. There's ways to write crossplatform C#, but most people that use C# use MS's native implementation to gleam all the benefits it offers, otherwise they just use something else.