My introduction to programming was ZZT-OOP[1], the language built into the roguelike ZZT created by Tim Sweeney (Unreal.)
Each ASCII character with a program was an object and they communicated by passing messages to each other. Items like bullets and the player also could pass messages to these custom objects. I remember piecing together some complicated multi-step, multi-object behaviors in a sort of concurrent programming.
My other introduction was changing the behavior of the gorillas in GORILLAS.BAS. From that I learned about Basic, and eventually wrote my first utility for another game, which was a battle success estimator/damage calculator for Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
I think the playfulness of games and the more straightforward representation of objects in games really helps children understand the point of programming and some programming concepts that are more obscured in business/utility software.
ZZT was also my first programming experience. It was great. The message passing concurrency was pretty nice except it worked as an external goto. Also zzt-oop had lots of shortcoming so people had to come with with very creative workarounds (especially for arithmetic). Despite that it was good fun. In some ways it'd be nice to have a modern clone with an improved language and a similar simple model (graphical objects with contained concurrent programs, message passing only).
Each ASCII character with a program was an object and they communicated by passing messages to each other. Items like bullets and the player also could pass messages to these custom objects. I remember piecing together some complicated multi-step, multi-object behaviors in a sort of concurrent programming.
My other introduction was changing the behavior of the gorillas in GORILLAS.BAS. From that I learned about Basic, and eventually wrote my first utility for another game, which was a battle success estimator/damage calculator for Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
I think the playfulness of games and the more straightforward representation of objects in games really helps children understand the point of programming and some programming concepts that are more obscured in business/utility software.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZZT-oop