我同意上面的superjoe30，但我还没有足够的声誉来留下评论。

我做了四年的计算机科学教授。语言是Basic，然后是Pascal，但语言是什么并不重要。

作为一名新教授，我学到的最大的一课是，无论我认为一个概念有多简单，它对新手来说都不简单。不要比你的学生快。我怎么强调都不为过。非常非常慢。

我会从非常简单的东西开始，阅读和打印，也许是一个简单的计算，只是为了让学生习惯输入和输出一些东西。然后是IF语句。然后是非常简单的FOR循环，总是根据学生可以编写的内容，并从中获得乐趣。

然后我会花3个星期的时间教授一种非常简单的机器语言，用于一台叫做SIMPL的伪十进制机器，你可以一步完成。这样做的原因是为了让学生看到“橡胶遇见道路”的地方，计算机一步一步地做事情，事情发生的顺序是不同的。如果没有这一点，学生们倾向于认为计算机可以读懂他们的思想，并一次性完成所有事情。

然后回到基本。几周的阵列，因为那是一个很大的减速带。然后是顺序文件，这是另一个减速带。我所说的“减速带”是指学生可以很自信地前进，然后你给他们一个像数组这样的概念，他们又完全迷失了，直到你让他们放松下来。

然后，有了这些技能，我会让他们选择一个学期项目，因为这让编程变得有趣。没有用处，真的很无聊。我会建议各种各样的项目，比如游戏、会计课程、科学课程等等。看到它们被打开真是太好了。他们经常会向我寻求帮助，这很好，因为你知道他们在学习。

当他们在做他们的项目时，我们将继续介绍更高级的编程技术——搜索、排序、合并，以及如何创建一个简单的数据库等等。

祝你好运。教书是一项艰苦的工作，但当你看到学生的成长时，你会感到满足。

If he is interested than I wouldn't worry about focusing on games or whatnot. I'd just grab that beginners 'teach yourself x' book you were about to throw and give it him and let him struggle through it. Maybe talk about it after and then do another and another. After then I'd pair program with him so he could learn how shallow and lame those books he read were. Then I'd start having him code something for himself. A website to track softball stats or whatever would engage him. For me it was a database for wine back in the day.

在那之后，我会开始真正的书籍，领域设计等。

There have already been a bunch of great answers, but for an absolute beginner, I would wholeheartedly recommend Hackety Hack. It was created by the unreasonably prolific why_the_lucky_stiff specifically to provide a BASIC/LOGO/Pascal-like environment for new programmers to experiment in. It's essentially a slick Ruby IDE with some great libraries (flash video, IM, web server) and interactive lessons. It makes a good pitch for programming, as it chose lessons that do fun, useful things. "Hello, world" may not impress right off the bat, but creating a custom IM client in 20 minutes can inspire someone to keep learning. Have fun!

Robert Read写了一个很有用的指南，如何成为一个程序员，它涵盖了广泛的编程问题，初学者会发现很有帮助。

There is a book called Code. I can't remember who wrote it, but it goes through the basics of a lot of stuff that we (programmers) know and take for granted that people we talk to know also. Everything from how do you count binary to how processors work. It doesn't have anything dealing with programming languages in it (well from what I remember), but it is a pretty good primer. I will admit that I am also of the school that believes you have to know how the computer works to be able to effectively program things for it.

这是一本很棒的书，我的小弟弟们曾经学过:

http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/

当然，最重要的是在读完这本书之后立即开始一个真正有用的程序。