Programming For Terrified Adults?

makeitreal writes "My mom is getting bored with learning the basics of email and has mastered Solitaire. She asked me what I do on my computer and I told her that I was teaching myself programming in Scheme. She expressed an interest in learning what I was doing, but I tried to teach it to her with the HtDP and we didn't even get past the introductory chapter. Everything I've looked at so far seems too complicated (Scheme, Python, VB) or too childish (Logo, Squeak, Lego Mindstorms). Is there anything in the middle that is also cheap/free and suitable for adults? Or should I give up the whole idea?"

Comments

Scheme, MzScheme, and MrEd

[frovingslosh]

Forgive the frankness of my choice of words, but Scheme, MzScheme, and MrEd, what crap! If someone is going to learn to program, then at least do it with a language that is actually used, not one that was "created" to hype a book. C or even Basic would be better choices. I would stay away from the visual versions of these and simply start on simple command line versions at first, but Visual Basic or even Visual C is another option if you want to tackel something that will let you get visually interesting results quickly.

Depending on your mother's background and interests, learing to use tools like spreadsheets might be interesting (particularly since these can also be programmed in a script language as well as just used as the basic tools thay are). And of course she should be introduced to a word processing program if all she has done in that area is e-mail so far.

Of course, she should be exposed to the rest of the Internet, particularly the web, if all she has done so far is e-mail. She might even want to set up a web page. Show her the interesting tools available, from on-line encyclopedias to using search engines to find old friends.

Try Perl or for the bold - Lisp

[q256]

As far as learning to program :
I would very stongly avoid the web side of the programming world. It is way too full of oddities which will not aid in teaching programming skills. "Which browser" is a difficult first question to ask for most web programmers to start out with, and everyone know they still miss that one.

Perl is a good area to learn a powerful skill that would be beneficial to move forward to the next language / script. Hey, if a script kiddie can bring an internet site down... mom could too.

For the bold mom :
Lisp - get her to make self learning program to WIN that solitaire game, make a mega EQ bot - RAM / HD space is cheap now cheep.