Well, given your experience, I'll bow to your knowledge. My daughter is learning Pascal (on her own) and she just turned 11 Saturday. I have a good C++ book and I'm going to go back and look at it and see which she feels better about. I want her to learn the correct programming structures as well as modularity but I am not worried about which syntax she goes with. Afterall, she may burn herself out on programming before she is 15! To me, the C++ language syntax was much more difficult than pascal. The semicolons drive me crazy in pascal as well as using units, but the syntax in C++ was more confusing I thought for a beginner. Your boys didn't have any problem starting out with C++? I may want to rethink this... :o)

Tracy

>>I would recommend a 'fun' one like macromedia flash. he could post stuff on his website and get immediate "wow" responses from his friends. After that, I think java or Delphi are the first development languages he may want to learn. They are good for accomplishing many tasks and Delphi is a great 'gaming' development tool and it helps to know Java and Pascal too for college level courses later.
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>>Tracy
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>No, no! Both my sons started learning C++ (not Visual) and I think it is good. Really they offen try some syntax seen from older boys and make errors, but I like C syntax and I think it is good language for starting programmers to relise base languaage structures.