My commodore Vic 20 led me to a very successful career in development - more so than my college degree ever could. As for beginning development - I've recently been introduced to Robocode (robocode.sourceforge.net) and believe I will be introducing that to my kids very soon.
Making it fun to learn and exciting is what gets the creative juices flowing, and that creativity as well as logic skills can be turned into a strong passion easy enough with the right tools.
Nice article
Biting the hand that feeds IT
