Back in my day, I learned how to program with HyperCard on the Mac. It allowed making GUIs right away, had plenty of books, and was a self-contained environment (not the mess that is HTML/CSS/JS).
Now, a family friend's 12 year old daughter is curious about making iPod/iPhone apps and I'm wondering what is the right language/platform/environment for this era. Suggestions?
Some people recommended Greenfoot and Invent with Python, but I'm looking for something that can produce results on a device she's already using. (Because I remember trying to learn programming in an alien environment and I found it really discouraging when I was a kid. In my day, that was trying to learn console text-mode programming when I was a Mac GUI user. Present-day Me thinks it makes sense to learn the basics in text-mode on a PC first, but Kid Me is not convinced.)