What's a good programming language for a 10 year old?

[Inigo Montoya]

My boy is fascinated with computers and creating stuff. I really think he would enjoy creating simple programs just for the mental gymnastics. What programming languages are in use these days that are 1) useful, 2) reasonably simple (does anyone use pascal anymore?) and 3) heh heh heh ... wrong board.

[Phalanx]

My boy is fascinated with computers and creating stuff. I really think he would enjoy creating simple programs just for the mental gymnastics. What programming languages are in use these days that are 1) useful, 2) reasonably simple (does anyone use pascal anymore?) and 3) heh heh heh ... wrong board.

Tell him to talk to the ten year old IT guy that manages the database and server on the Straight Dope.

[tirial]

If he's just starting then HTML and Javascript would allow him to create simple games with Notepad and a browser. If he's already familiar with the concepts, then possibly Java or Ruby (both of which have the advantage of having free compilers).

I started on BASIC, but I'm not sure if that's still around and all the GOTOs can teach very bad habits.

[Mangetout]

Delphi wouldn't actually be too bad a choice - you can download some free versions of it (I think called Turbo Delphi or some such.

Reasonging:
-It's object-oriented
-The language is based on Pascal, which is kinda like the language of BASIC, with the syntax structure of C
-It's a visual development environment

[mozg]

I'd suggest Java. To write Java, you have to learn OOP (Object Oriented Programming), and you also have to learn proper syntax, structure, and class interaction. It's not the simplest language in the world, sure, but it is extremely useful and you can go a long way from Hello World and simple command line applications to GUI, applets, and client-server stuff that's actually in use in industry.

A lot of schools use it, particularly universities, for their programming classes, which would give a kid a jump on the competition, and learning to code in an IDE without a visual development environment strengthens the understanding of underlying programming concepts. It's a lot harder, I think, to go from a visual environment where code is laid out for you without having to think about that to writing it freehand than it is to learn freehand code writing and then use a visual tool to speed up the GUI layout process.

Java is also free. You can get free IDEs for Java (like Netbeans from Sun) that are used by actual programmers/software engineers (like me), and be using something that you're not only learning from but also is being used by some pretty big deal software companies. There are tons and tons of Java books, Java tutorials, Java forums, Java packages, and Java resources out there on the web, so with a little bit of Google, you can find out pretty much anything.

It's also truly platform independent. There are no syntactical changes at all in Java that runs on Unix, Linux, Windows, or Mac. The JVM for each is going to take the exact same byte code and run it, so you don't need to worry about syntax differences or compiler compatibility like you do with C++. You can learn to use an IDE or a Textpad/Ultra Edit and javac approach without changing languages.

mozg
Writing Java since 1.0 (1997 to be exact)

[ultrafilter]

A ten year old's brain simply isn't developed enough to handle the degree of abstraction involved in some of the more modern programming languages, and specifically not the object-oriented paradigm. Something like Alice (http://www.alice.org), which was specifically designed to introduce children to programming, is ideal, as it involves a very concrete set of actions, and the output is very visual.

[XJETGIRLX]

If he wants to get into web design/development or anything with a web-based aspect I would suggest HTML and CSS to get started. While they might have been a bit much for me when I was 10, considering the intuitive nature that kids grasp technology these days I don't think it would be too much for him. After that I'd sprinkle in some ASP and PHP, then he can get into MySQL.

[Jurph]

My first was either BASIC or LOGO, depending how you count. LOGO is a drawing program where your programmatic commands move the turtle around; the nice part is that the I/O is built-in: you tell the turtle what to do and you see pictures appear on the screen. BASIC is neat, but if PEEK and POKE are still valid commands you could end up with a kid who learns how to crash a computer reliably. Another option is MATLAB, but you want to be careful that the 10-year-old understands that a computer with MATLAB is definitely covered under most teachers' "no calculators" rule.

[si_blakely]

Python is a learning good option - along with PyGame, he could write a game. It is very structured (whitespace structure defines syntax, so Python is generally clear and readable), and provides a comprehensive set of libraries.

Otherwise, you can download free versions of the Microsoft .NET languages (VisualBasic, C#). VisualBasic is easier to learn, and pretty structured.

Si

[McNutty]

I think Javascript is a pretty decent starter language. You can do plain old procedural programming in it, which is not only simple, but is also more analogous to how computers really work than, say, object-oriented or functional programming.

Javascript has a few more benefits:

• You already have an environment that can run it (your browser), and Firefox has an excellent javascript console for running sample snippets of code to see what they do.[/*:m:2g6xlw0y]
• It's the language used to do whizzy stuff on web pages, which will probably interest a kid.[/*:m:2g6xlw0y]
• It's pretty forgiving in its syntax (many would argue that this makes it bad for a learner language since it allows you to be lazy, but I'd say that for a 10 year old, this is a benefit)[/*:m:2g6xlw0y]
• It has a small number of intrinsic datatypes to worry about learning, and objects are not typed at all[/*:m:2g6xlw0y]

I'd love to see a "try javascript" interactive tutorial like the one here for ruby, but more geared toward non-programmers. That's a fantastic intro to the ruby language, although in the second lesson, it gets into stuff that's not appropriate for someone who's never programmed before, so it definitely wouldn't cut it for a 10-year-old.