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I, like the author, got my first taste of programming in BASIC back in the 80's. I had a Tandy color computer with a cassette drive and dual 5.25" floppies, and I completely agree that this has given me a solid understanding of computers that has helped me to this day. However, BASIC is not your only option. A fantastic, but usually overlooked, BASIC 'like' scripting language that is easy to learn and fun to use is AppleScript. Its simple English like code and easy to use Script Editor makes it fun for kids to learn and use. Moreover, it's a useful tool for scripting repetative tasks as well. But the fun doesn't stop there, the language is useable with Apple's Cocoa environment allowing you to easily create script driven application interfaces. In addition the Mac comes with a UNIX terminal in which kids can be taught shell scripting, a useful skill to this day.
