On 28/01/2015 21:48, Ferretygubbins wrote:
I know this is OT but I rather suspect that some of you will be able to
help.

Boy1 (13) is interested in learning how to write code and so I would
like to set him up with a toolkit for his PC (Windows) unfortunately my
programming days are somewhat in the past and restricted to MUMPS which
was archaic even back then. Has anyone any suggestions for a suitable
platform? As ever the cheaper the better.

For a taste of real programming, ie. using text editors and producing
text output on a console, then perhaps Python is the best of a bad
bunch, at least to get started.

For things that might be more interesting to young people as graphics,
games, audio and networking, then it gets rapidly complicated. Then
maybe some hand-holding development system such as have been mentioned
can come in useful.

As for the Raspberry Pi, that's good for someone who intends to learn
how to battle Linux to get even the simplest thing done!

(That was my experience anyway: the first day was spent getting a
display that wasn't over-scanned, under-scanned, not too low a
resolution and not too high, something I hadn't needed to worry about
since the 80s. This involved taking out the SD card, and editing the
CONFIG.TXT file on a PC (ie. a real computer), before trying again with
a different bunch of numbers.)

--
Bartc