I used to work as a TA in some intro classes that used Karel and Karel++ http://pclc.pace.edu/~bergin/karel.html Kinda like Lego Mindstorms on your screen. It's really pretty cool what you can do with it (make a binary calculator out of robots, for instance). The classes would start with a few weeks of Karel, then move on to other languages.
For me anyway, it's about learning to think and express your ideas via programming, the language is really secondary (i.e. most learn more than one, if they go on in the field).
Stuff like this was fun (for most people) and laid a decent foundation for later.
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'Teenage' can cover a wide range, but we've had fun with Lego Mindstorms http://shop.lego.com/ByTheme/Product.aspx?p=8527&cn=17&d=70
I used to work as a TA in some intro classes that used Karel and Karel++ http://pclc.pace.edu/~bergin/karel.html Kinda like Lego Mindstorms on your screen. It's really pretty cool what you can do with it (make a binary calculator out of robots, for instance). The classes would start with a few weeks of Karel, then move on to other languages.
For me anyway, it's about learning to think and express your ideas via programming, the language is really secondary (i.e. most learn more than one, if they go on in the field).
Stuff like this was fun (for most people) and laid a decent foundation for later.