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While I did first learn Basic (in around 1977 on a DEC-20 followed by an Apple ][ I bought myself), I find that I can't really agree with David's article. When my daughter's old enough to start playing around, I won't head for Basic. I'd probably first start with Perl -- which, yes, comes with a Mac. Perl is just as easy to begin with as Basic, if you start off with simple algorithms, iterations, etc. But it's even better because it adds functions while doing away with bad habits like GOTO statements, and a student can go much farther with it before branching out into Java/C++/etc. But regardless of which language you might choose, there are so many possibilities that I can't agree that there's a major problem here. Python, perl, Ruby, Java (which can be approached in a simple way as well)...and many more.
What I can agree on is that it would be useful to have some sort of a standard, in the sense that Basic was a standard. Almost every student in the 80s probably began with Basic (Pascal was what my university used for their early comp sci classes), and there is some value in standardizing. But in its absence, there are certainly many options for now.
