Is C a good language to start out learning programming?

My 11 yr old wants to start learning how to do programming/animation. Anyone have good suggestions on how to get him started on a simple platform/language that he'll enjoy, but can use later when he's taking programming classes in school?

• Answer:

  We live in a time when open source libraries for dabbling in graphics/animation are readily available to almost anyone with a computer, an internet connection and a desire to learn. Personally I got started out in the archaic QBasic programming language eons ago doing basic sprite blitting on the screen(And I believe I was 11 years old as well so it's a good age to start!). Today however I would suggest checking out LOVE: https://love2d.org/ It's a free open-source 2d graphics library built on top of lua. I have been using lua myself(integrating it into my C/C++ game engine to make it scriptable) and my assessment of it as a scripting language have been rather positive so far. Lua is very easy to pickup and the LOVE library should make it easy for any beginner to immediately start out on basic 2D graphics/animation. One good thing about LOVE is that even though it is simple to pick up, many of the basic concepts in graphics are exposed to the programmer. You get to play around with framebuffers, coordinate systems, sprite transparency etc. There's even a layer built on top of Box2D so you can also perform some basic 2D rigid body dynamics in your game/app if you so desire. A good way to learn basic mechanics too which is also very fun! I believe the underlying calls to render polygons/sprites in LOVE are accelerated via OpenGL so make sure your setup has a reasonable GPU when running it(it should, most PCs/Macs today come with a decent GPU anyway) The other thing I suggest would be to pick up some math books related to geometry or algebra from a public library since those constitute the foundation for doing any sort of graphics programming. Oh and a book on lua as well but there are numerous free tutorials online too if you do not have the budget for an "official" book.