I don't want to start a religious war here or have to wade through a history of computer languages. I would have posted on /. for that! My 15 year old son (ninth grade) wants me to teach him programming. I don't want to traumatize him with assembler -- dealing with me should be sufficient. What would be a good first language to use? We both think a barebones implementation of Life (John Conway's ...) could be a good first project. Source code should be available in virtually every language for every possible platform. He's looked at Scratch and MindStorms. He thinks they are too simplistic and wants something that is deeper. (I know MindStorms has C++, etc., but the Lego platform isn't inspiring him.). And, I don't even know if either Scratch or MindStorms is up to the task of Life. Next up might be Micropolis (SimCity) although that could be a bit daunting. Development platforms can be XP or OS X. Thanks all, David