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While I'll have DS/DD look at Scrath first, either Python or Java will likely be the first real programming language I'll steer them towards.

Interesting - I think that DS will have more issues with syntax than programmtic thinking/design skillls.

LOL. DS, another minecract afficionada since age 8, will be in the next cubicle/office!

Thanks - that was very informative. Based on the little bit that I have learned, it seems that Python would be the "best" choice in general, but DS is really into minecraft so Java may have more appeal whereas DD would need some external motivation to get her to learn any programming at all.

It's good to get confirmation that there are good sources aimed at kids, especially for self-teaching. I have my eye on the MIT course from Bostonian's thread.

Fortran was my second language (college) and back then it was one of the languages of choice for differential equations applications.

It is still being used in scientific computing and has been modernized substantially since the FORTRAN 77 you probably used. There are free compilers gfortran and g95 that can be tried.

Nowadays many engineers use Matlab, the full version of which is expensive. The student version for high school and college students is cheaper. Octave is a free alternative compatible with Matlab but does not have a GUI. Python with SciPy has many of the capabilities of Matlab and is what I'd recommend for students who want to program for scientific research.

I figured as much! In those days, the university had huge mainframes to do the compilations. We only used macs for word processing/grahpics and pcs were not far from its infancy.

I imagine that programming lanaguages today are quite different from the Pascal and Fortran that dominated in the maith/science disciplines back then. That is why I am completely clueless and count on my children being able to teach themselves.

In some ways I think Python is the thought cousin of Pascal. Philosophically, Python is a living language and plans to adapt with or without downward compatibility to implement improvements in design or methodology.

My interaction with Fortran was in a high school summer program in 84; we were supposed to input a Fortran program to calculate predicted flight times for model rockets. I translated it into BASIC and ran it on an AppleII in some secretary's computer at the college. -smirk- I won the award for best predicted average flight time for my two rockets.

Interesting. Pascal was the language of choice for introductory programming courses back in my day. I think it was conducive to teaching the basics of programming to beginners. Perhaps that is also true for Python