What is a first computer language to teach a 10 year old? Be specific.?

Answer 1

Assembly. If they can code at the machine level everything else will be easy.

Answer 2

Does this 10 year old WANT to learn programming? If he/she doesn't then you probably won't be successful. However, if there is a genuine interest then I think that is awesome.

Most computer programming languages have concepts and big words that might be hard to define or comprehend by a 10 year old -- such as inheritance and polymorphism, data types, type casting, etc.

The easiest language that I have studied and learned is visual basic script -- or ASP. Maybe he can start making a little web page for himself and learning how ASP works. He can start off just learning how functions work and how data can be stored and used, then on to learning conditions and loops.

You could teach him, for example, how to do a multiplication table.

Answer 3

BASIC or a flavor of that (Visial Basic, GWBASIC, QBASIC, Etc)

This will teach logic which then can be applied to ANY other language if programming is taught correctly. Don't concentrate on the syntax, but rather WHAT you want to accomplish and THEN, what steps need to happen to accomplish the goal....the code will almost build itself.

The above logic to teaching programming was taught to me by a professor in Visual Basic class where he stated on the first day that he refused to teach programming, but he was going to show us how to think and then apply it to the language of choice, in our case, Visual Basic. I walked into a company programming on an AS/400 with no further knowledge of the machine (which does not act like a desktop computer by no stretch of the imagination) and was programming complex code in less than 6 months in 2 languages that I had never heard of until I started working there.

Answer 4

I would have to agree with assembly. It will take a lot longer and be way more difficult. But in the end he will be far better off for it.

most high level languages have inline assembly features built into them. Being good at assembly will make all the others easier. Also, from 10 years old... He will be able to get a programming/design job easy as pie.

Answer 5

You could download "Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition" and teach a 10 year old "Visual Basic .Net"

Its a widely used programming language used in many commercial environments

[Edited] Yes, also aggred with "kryptonboy22" below, HTML is a good place to start, followed by ASP.net (and/or) PHP

Answer 6

too early for 10. probably you should teach him HTML than any language. In programming you must learn how logical thinking works first. HTML is easy and not complicated though its not really language but when he get use to it he will probably look for more and advance than HTML. Like ASP or PHP instead. that's the real language. learning HTML will just be his first step and also the basic part of web developing.

Answer 7

I would recommend languages that belong to the 4th generation (Very high-level language) since it's practically English sentences that are more suited for the human mind as opposed to numbers as in the languages of the earlier generations.

Answer 8

Probably the best language for a ten years would bee BASIC (VB.NET). It is very powerful language with the syntax very close to spoken English, and the very good base for further development in any other language. I saw the answer Assembler, this is also very good suggestion but I;m afraid to tough for ten.

Answer 9

I'd try python. It has a neat syntax with little punctuation (tabs are important though).

If you want to go another direction. Try LOGO, a teaching language geared towards thinking in the functional and sequential style. It may be better because you can immediately see what your "turtle" is drawing.

Answer 10

Try Visual Basic. This is the easiest programming language in the world. And the interface is quite easy to use.

Answer 11

KPL...Kids Programming Language?