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Comment by chanux | Hacker News Reader

I'm not specifically qualified in any way to say what's best to get a kid started on computer science/programming is but I believe it's nice to let them take the path how things evolved naturally. If this is too much, (regarding programming) maybe start with C.

I also believe it's good to read CS history. Following article is a personal favorite. http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/fp.html

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I think Python or any scripting language is better to ease someone into CS especially at that age. It is rewarding and helps to see "Hello world!" on the screen immediately in a line of code as opposed to wrangling with IDES and cryptic messages for missing semicolons.

From experience hello world is actually a terrible first thing to show someone in a scripting language since it is pretty much a dead end. Seeing "Hello world!" is not really that rewarding when compared with something like

    a = 3 + 2
    print a

Maybe if it's the only thing you show someone but most tutorials will start with hello world! and then progress to variables, string interpolation, expressions through a sequence of:

1. Try changing the statement print your name.

2. Having to type the same thing over and over is unnecessary, we can save it in a variable.

3. You can use variables inside the print statement through a process called string interpolation.

4. In addition to strings, variables can hold many types of values, including numbers.

5. Operators can be used to manipulate values. Do some math with the variables.

6. Receive input and save in variable.

From there you can go to conditional statements, loops and functions.

Yeah that is a very straight-forward sequence, however some people just seem to be more comfortable with numbers. Either approach could be taken as long as it is mapped out like you did above.

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