Learning how to program... but what's the best way?

[Hans Nowak]

Hi,

I know a 14-year-old who wants to learn programming.  Of course I'd recommend 
Python, and I also know the way to all the tutorials, non-programmers 
introductions, etc.  But...

The problem is, I don't expect my student to swoon over "hello world", or to 
get excited about doing basic mathemathical computations.  Nor will standard 
computer science stuff about bits, bytes, hexadecimal numbers etc be appealing. 
Sure, those concepts are important, and will be dealt with in due time, but 
what I'm looking for right now is a way to capture people's interest-- to do 
something funny, or cool, or useful even for someone who doesn't know programming.

To give an idea of what I have in mind: A good start could be, for example, 
some kind of game that can be scripted in Python, and therefore extended at 
will.  The "student" could say, "I want the game to do this-and-that", then 
proceed to implement it.  Unfortunately, I know of no such game, and have no 
time to write it <0.3 wink>.

Besides this, does anyone have ideas about what would be a good starting point 
here?

TIA,

-- 
Hans (base64.decodestring('d3VybXlAZWFydGhsaW5rLm5ldA=='))
# decode for email address ;-)
The Pythonic Quarter:: http://www.awaretek.com/nowak/