Ask HN: It's 2022. Where should I direct the youths to learn about programming?

I'd go with Python, Javascript, (and also Godot engine if they have an interest in game development). After that, any other language they'd want to learn should come fairly easily to them. All three have great huge piles of tutorials available free on YouTube, as well as various free and / or cheap resources available from Humble Bundle, Udemy, and other sites (especially if you catch them on sale).

VS Code with C#. Why: VS Code is the editor and no matter what comes next in his choices, even random non CS stuff, VS Code will be good. Maybe start with a notebook and not a program in the first days.

Why C#: it is the most versatile platform. You can create apps, web stuff, servers, desktop apps, machine learning, console apps, etc. It is statically typed (which is important for the youth to understand what he is doing), has excellent intellisense and beginner friendliness was a focus in the last year (a one liner is nowadays a valid c# program). .NET as base platform allows also F# for a switch to the purity (do not make me comment on that), can run on Linux/macos (if this is important to you) and most important: is not Python which everyone else is doing. Python is the new boring Java.

Well it was the fifth course in my departments sequence, so a lot of students wouldn't take it until junior year. By that time they were decently proficient at writing code.

I think the important thing is to focus on the end objective - so not programming just for the sake of programming, but programming as a means to do something else.

Start with an interpreted language that doesn't require convoluted compilation or build-steps. Or at the very least something with a "play button" that allows one-click runs. Anything else just distracts and confuses from the actual "programming" part.

I'll echo others and say building games is a good on-ramp for kids. I also recall enjoying playing around in Visual Basic as I could make a "real application" and it was satisfying to see my work as a "real" program I could see and use, and try to work out how to imitate other features I was seeing in apps I used every day.

As yours is 18 something like scratch is probably too "baby-ish" so perhaps python will feel like more of a grown up option for them with the option to do some fun stuff with game/graphic programming. Visual Basic .net (or even C#) will allow for building GUI apps nicely.

If they enjoy those they'll be able to broaden their horizons and learn more. Don't sweat the theory aspects - they don't need to know about runtime complexity and monads etc just to get started - if they get the bug for coding, they'll come across this stuff on their own eventually (e.g. when they end up creating a naive O(n^n) implementation, they'll end up spending some time trying to optimise it even if they don't realise they are doing that - be there to help guide and offer pointers to help open their eyes to it all)

Good luck

One of my programming starts was Delphi. Pascal is an easy language, but has some fundamental features: pointers, classes, procedures, custom types, manual memory management on heap and so on (it was devised as a teaching language IIRC). Delphi provided a GUI builder and a rich library which made it all fun and visual; you could whip out a first “program” or “game” in no time.

Delphi is no more but there is some successor, seems to be well received on HN.