http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=29990


in reply to Perl as a first language

I don't know about your children. (I have 2 ages 12 and 13) My have no interests in programming at this point in their lives, but I had a summer worker in our IS dept. over the past couple of months. He had a lot of PC experience, but no programming experience. I spent a couple of days working with him on Perl. It allowed him the "instant gratification" factor as well as the "fun" factor to become a part of his work life. He picked up a rudimentary skill in about 3 weeks and now that he is back in school, he is honing those skills. Perl allowed me to teach operators, variables, conditionals in a painless fun way using Randal Schwartz's "Learning Perl". Hopefully he will take this, run with it and turn it into a career. He has the passion, now he just needs the love Poetic Justice