8/15    My cousin wants to learn to program, but there's no CS classes
        at his highschool.  I Any suggestions on what he should study?
        I told him to study PERL, because it would help him get a good
        job.
        \_Scheme.
        \_ Personally, I learned most things I know about computer science and
           programming by writing code.  Perhaps a better way to motivate
           your cousin's education is to encourage him to code up some sort of
           project.  The trick is to reign it in so he's not trying to do
           something that's likely out of his capacity ('I want to write a
           Quake clone!').  Once you know what he wants to accomplish, choice
           of language should be straightforward.
           \_ I agree.  How about writing a game?  Java?
        \_ I'd suggest Python.  Very easy to learn, has good tools for free
           (especially wxPython), and has great online books.  See
           http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython.html
           for example (though this book also comes for Java).
        \_ When I was a kid we didn't have CS at HS either, so I went to
           a junior college in the evenings. You might try that. There
           might also be summer CS camps, like at stanford or other univ.
           \_ that won't work. he's in juvy.
        \_ I learned programming by reading the manual of a Casio PB-100 which
           had a 11-character display and RAM space for 27 variables and 544
           bytes of BASIC code.  I wrote a simplified version of Pac Man on it.
           (That's in 1982 and I was 12.)  So I think he should start with
           something very simple like the basic BASIC in the old days, not the
           fancy BASICs we have now.  Once he doesn't lose interest, he can
           move up to one of today's languages.  But then I don't know where
           you can find a simple BASIC these days.  -- yuen