I learned programming at young age (7), and it was great fun! I think today there are many new programming languages making it much more easy and funny. By now python is my favorite language - it is probably one of the easiest languages to learn and yet powerful enough to do useful things!

There are also languages out there that are specifically made for only for learning. One of the earliest was Logos - I found it very interesting back in the 80s, but looking back on it now ... nah, that's definitively not something I would like to teach. The concept of "turtle graphics" is a good one though, and Python does have a "turtle graphics"-library.

For the youngest, there is also the programming language "scratch" - if I've understood it correctly one can program without having to type a single letter on the keyboard.

I've been teaching programming a couple of times as well. I have experienced three different categories of students; students really having an inner motivation for programming (the sky is the limit! incidentally, some of the best programmers I know have been studying physics), people who started learning programming to get a profitable profession (most of them finish their education, but they usually don't end up as very good programmers) ... and then there are those who really don't have the basic skills for programming - I've spent really lots of time on two such students, they where both highly motivated, but they just didn't understand the basic concepts, no matter how much time they spent on it.

I believe programming has a bit in common with languages:

• It's a lot easier to learn it at young age than at older age
• For some people it comes easy, for others it's very hard (I learned English at young age, later I've tried learning several other languages but never succeeded with it).