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Read other letters about this article
Yes, there is some academic writing on Scheme that would be tough for a newcomer. I forgot to include a link in my first comment:
http://www.drscheme.org/
I'm sure there are some introductions to scheme that are easier to digest than that jargon-laced description.
For those who still find Scheme too pointy-headed I recommend giving it a go anyway; I don't use it much anymore but I still think about it fairly often. It really does do a good job of presenting the basics in a way that's uncluttered.
If learning to be a programmer isn't your long term goal, then the suggestions that other people made for Ruby or Python are good ones. If you're really interested in the low-level details, C is tough to beat, though that's not how I would choose to start out.
BASIC really is pretty awful, though. It's where I came from but I'd never go back there.
These days there is some great stuff freely available out there. Part of the reason reading this article was so jarring for me is that we're pretty much in a golden age software-wise; if anything the problem is that there's too much stuff. The solution to that problem is to pick one of the very good current alternatives, though, not to try and bring back the days when one crappy option was the obvious choice.
