note dragonchild My 10-year old has been on me to teach him how to program for a while. After an abortive attempt to start with logic and flowcharts, I've decided to use a language that provides instant feedback. I want to use Lisp. I may choose to use Ruby, but I'm pretty sure it will be Common Lisp. Reason? I want my son to think logically before procedurally or OO-lly. I want him to design bottom-up instead of top-down, which is what the procedural languages practically demand that the programmer do. <p>What I do know is that you have to spend time on the editor as well as the language. If the programmer has to fight the editor just to get hello_world.* to work, then the programmer will associate programming with frustration. That's bad. <!-- Node text goes above. Div tags should contain sig only --> <div class="pmsig"><div class="pmsig-85580"> <hr> My criteria for good software: <ol> <li>Does it work? <li>Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced? </ol> </div></div> 508131 508131