My teaching path for youngens:-

1. electrical circuits (switch, button, battery), no reading necessary, and purely physical. 2. gcompris (computer skills + you can simulate circuits so it connects to 1.) 3. Scratch 4. something textual (e.g. Basic but maybe Python or JS)

For 2, I'm guessing that BASIC is a step away from a visual drag-and-drop language towards something that you type in, and it's a stepping stone towards something like Python and other languages.

2. The real question is why Graham is teaching BASIC instead of Lisp.

my random guesses

1. Someone else made this site in order to centralize all of Paul's relevant parenting content in one place.

2. PG prefers the text-only purity of Basic.

3. Who cares.

2. Why is he teaching Basic over Scratch?

Scratch is too mainstream for Graham.