Question

Is this course appropriate for pre-teens to learn programming, or is there a better place to start for that age group?

Answer 1

I got my little brother started on scratch - http://scratch.mit.edu/ - it's an environment that lets you learn programming by creating interactive stories

Answer 2

he loves it!

Answer 3

Mine's done Scratch, Alice, and Mindstorms - but he's wanting to get into what he thinks of as "real programming" :). Plus the word amongst kids is that Python is the language to know.

Answer 4

Python, Ruby, Scala, they're all perfectly good places to get started. Ruby has a good fully interactive introduction at http://tryruby.org/.

Answer 5

very cool! thanks @shadowfiend

Answer 6

No problem. Keep us posted!

Answer 7

Real programming, Python,C/++,Java are all good languages to learn "real" programming. Currently Google seems to be encouraging the use of C++ and Python, so getting a head start on those while at a young age seems like a good idea.