title: What features are important in a programming language for young beginners?
body: <p>I was talking with some of the mentors in a local robotics competition for 7th and 8th level kids.  The robot was using PBASIC and the parallax Basic Stamp.  One of the major issues was this was short term project that required building the robot, teaching them to program in PBASIC and having them program the robot.  All in only 2 hours or so a week over a couple months.  PBASIC is kinda nice in that it has built in features to do everything, but information overload is possible to due this.  </p>
  
  <p>My thought are simplicity is key.</p>
  
  <p>When you have kids struggling to grasp:</p>
  
  <pre><code>if X&gt;10 then &lt;DOSOMETHING&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>There is not much point in throwing "proper" object oriented programming at them.</p>
  
  <p>What are the essentials needed to foster an interest in programming?</p>
  
  <p><strong>Edit</strong>:
  I like the notion of interpreted on the PC as learning tool.  Due to the target platforms more than likely being somewhat resource constrained, I would like to target languages that are appropriate for embedded work.  (Python and even Lua require more resources than the target likely to have.  And I actually kinda like Lua.) I suppose that is one of the few virtues BASIC has, it has been ran on systems with less than 4K for over 30 years.  C may not be a bad option if there are some "friendly" tools available such as Ch.</p>