Ed Huntress wrote:

I know, I should ask this somewhere else, but I don't trust somewhere
else...

My son is an economics researcher for a think tank, and he uses statistics
programs -- SAS, SPSS, and SDATA -- all day long. He took it upon himself
to learn scripting for all three, an he's become pretty facile at writing
scripts in their dedicated scripting languages. Now he wants to learn
something about programming.

He has no interest in becoming a programmer, but he'd like to know
something that may be useful in his work (he had a math minor, and he's
now going for a Masters in applied mathematics). I used to dabble in C and
Assembly, so he's asked me what he should learn. I have no clue.

Some people he works with have recommended Python. I know nothing about
it. I suggested C, but I made the mistake to telling him it's like Latin
for a language major, and he hated Latin. He's not going to be doing
anything that relates to the Web. His interest is mostly in things that
will help him deal with data.

John Larkin, who hangs out at sci.electronics.design, swears by "Power
Basic." He says he doesn't like programming per se, so PB kind of relieves
him of some of the details - it's "BASIC," after all. I don't know anything
about Python, but it would probably be worth a look-see.

I've been known to hack "Matt's" perl scripts, for example:
http://www.scriptarchive.com/wwwboard.html
but I've heard that his scripts are really sucky when it comes to hostile
people hacking them.

Good Luck!
Rich