Rather than concentrating on either a language or a set of programming principles, you could instead try to identify a specific task that he can accomplish.
There are plenty of books that will assist in getting the job done, but for the kid to really learn it, give him something that he wants to see done. I have seen so many people made luke-warm by "learning to program". On the other hand, every person I know that is addicted to coding (and makes a good living doing it) has had the fire lit by wanting the computer to _do_ something it doesn't do, or that could not be bought due to money constraints. Find an application that needs to be written (Napster is a good example, or a baseball card trading e-bay/multiuser blog), then feed the tools and techniques that will allow him to get the job done. A loop here, some file i/o there, a db call and display, sorting the output, user preferences... Work on lighting the fire for coding. Pass along the passion. The rest will follow. For example: My History I started with a Star Trek game on a PDP-11 that I had to hand-enter from a paper listing - and then debug. (age 13) >From there I moved to creating a Stargate-Defender clone (Apple ][), a text based >Frogger (Commodore Pet), an Adventure clone based on our neighborhood (Apple again), >a D&D random encounter generator, a D&D random map maker, wrote my own flat file db >to store NPCs, Then learned dBase II to store my record collection, rewrote an >application that handled a soccer camp registration system (for free tuition), >rewrote a movie rental business system (for free lifetime rentals). I realized at >that time (age 15) I could get _paid_ to program. And although I code for a living, I >still develop a lot in my spare time. Jerry Johnson Evangelist for the day >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 10/16/02 10:33AM >>> I have a 13 year old nephew who is a genius (or at least in my mind ;). He seems to be interested in picking up programming. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?forumid=5 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists&body=lists/cf_community Structure your ColdFusion code with Fusebox. Get the official book at http://www.fusionauthority.com/bkinfo.cfm
