Vote on the poll and rest assured it is not public :p

I'l say its a valid learning tool, it's simple to grasp and introduces one to the basic concepts of computing... but for actual applications, or anyone seriouse about programming something, it's pitifull, and I would recommend skipping it and going straight to a language that has OOP concepts you can learn, such as C++ or Java, since these are essential in any modern day application.

-Andrew

I completely agree with andbna. 100%

I think there are better learning tools, e.g. Python or Smalltalk. You can gloss over OOP to begin with and just do things imperatively, but OOP blends so consistently and intuitively into the overall framework that there's less difficulty in moving on. C# isn't bad either.

And while everyone should probably still learn C++ or Java at some point (and assembler, if you want to do things properly), Python and C# are heavily used at the professional level too.

http://learnpython.pbwiki.com/HowToStart

Good ol' QBasic. Had I not wanted to play gorilla.bas and nibbles.bas - I'd be a farmer today - no offense to farmers. I was 13 when I 'reverse engineered' nibbles to write a simiar game in turbo pascal. Ahhh the good old days, when games fitted on floppies. I never really was taught QBasic, I read up and 'modded' other programmes..the syntax is easy to learn, the compiler is helpful in that it highlights errors and hints what to put on a line where an error is. . Anyway, yeah it's as good a learning tool as any I suppose :)