There've been a number of threads (that I'm too lazy to use SuperSearch to find) on this very topic. One, I think, actually hit like 40+ nodes in length.

The gist (as I remember) was that Perl is just fine to teach, so long as the teacher teaches good habits. :-)

It's good to teach because the reward cycle is very short. You can do things very quickly in Perl that kids will find cool.

I know I plan on teaching my fiancee and her three kids programming (as the ages are appropriate) in Perl and TurtleLOGO (if I can find it!). Both give very quick returns on small investment, and are useful, to boot.

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We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.