作为一个非程序员，我发现Pragmatic Programmers的《如何编程》这本书从基本的角度来说非常有帮助。对于初学者来说，这本书平易近人，易于阅读。它不会让你从初学者变成专家，但它会让你在选择一门语言并拿起你的第一本“学习用(语言)编程”书时做好准备。

My favourite "start learning to code" project is the Game Snakes or Tron because it allows you to start slow (variables to store the current "worm position", arrays to store the worm positions if the worm is longer than one "piece", loops to make the worm move, if/switch to allow the user to change the worm's direction, ...). It also allows to include more and more stuff into the project in the long run, e.g. object oriented programming (one worm is one object with the chance to have two worms at the same time) with inheritance (go from "Snakes" to "Tron" or the other way around, where the worm slightly changes behavior).

我建议您从微软的XNA开始。根据我的经验，如果你能在屏幕上看到一些东西，开始编程就会有趣得多，而XNA使得在屏幕上移动一些东西变得非常容易。做一些小的改变并获得另一种看法是很容易的，例如通过改变颜色，这样他就可以看到他的行动有效果->成功的印象。成功是有趣的，这是不断学习的巨大动力。

一旦你教会了他们如何编程，他们可能会想学习如何开发软件。 为此，我认为格雷格·威尔逊的软件木工课程很棒。它还使用Python作为学生的语言。

不如这样:纳特·托金顿(Nat Torkington)的《培养下一代黑客》。

我不知道怎样对你弟弟最好，但我知道我是从蟒蛇开始的。我从很小的时候就开始玩各种各样的游戏，并想要制作自己的游戏，所以我的叔叔用pygame库向我介绍了python。它有很多教程，让一切都很简单(在我看来比openGL简单多了)。 它仅限于2d，但你应该从简单开始。

我的叔叔推荐python，因为他当时对它很感兴趣，但我推荐它，现在已经相当有知识了，因为它很容易学，直观(或像编程语言一样直观)，而且简单(但肯定不简单)。

当时我个人觉得简单地学习编程非常无聊，但随着学习的深入，我又有了相当大的热情。我真的很想学习是为了创造一些东西，而不仅仅是学习。

我认为Python是个好主意。我会给他一些基本的任务让他自己去做，并告诉他，他遇到的任何死胡同都可以通过谷歌来解决。至少对我来说，自己解决问题总比别人告诉我解决方案更好。

一些可能的项目(排名不分先后):

Coin flip simulator. Let the user input a desired number of trials for the coin flipping. Execute it and display the results along with the percentage for heads or tails. Make a temperature converter with a menu that takes user input to choose which kind of conversion the user wants to do. After choosing the conversion and doing it, it should return to the main menu. Here's an example of an extended converter with the same idea: http://pastebin.org/6541 Make a program that takes a numeric input and displays the letter grade it would translate to. It'll end up evaluating the input against if and elif statements to find where it fits. Make a simple quiz that goes through several multiple choice or fill in the blank questions. At the end it will display how the user did. He can pick any questions he wants. Take an input of some (presumably large) number of pennies and convert it into bigger denominations. For example, 149 pennies = 1 dollar, 1 quarter, 2 dimes, and 4 pennies. Create a simple list manager. Be able to add/delete lists and add/delete entries in those lists. Here's an example of a christmas list manager: http://pastebin.org/6543 Create a program that will build and then test whether entered numbers form a magic square (with a 2D array). Here's some sample code, but it should really print out the square at each step in order to show where the user is in terms of buliding the square: http://pastebin.org/6544

我还建议用xTurtle或其他图形模块做一些事情，把事情混合起来，让他不会感到无聊。当然，这是非常多的实践编程，而不是很多人真正使用python的脚本，但我给出的例子几乎直接取自我通过python学习的时候，它对我来说非常有用。好运！