Best ways to teach a beginner to program?

You could try using Alice. It's a 3D program designed for use in introductory programming classes.

The two biggest obstacles for new programmers are often:

• syntax errors
• motivation (writing something meaningful and fun rather than contrived)

Alice uses a drag and drop interface for constructing programs, avoiding the possibility of syntax errors. Alice lets you construct 3D worlds and have your code control (simple) 3D characters and animation, which is usually a lot more interesting than implementing linked lists.

Experienced programmers may look down at Alice as a toy and scoff at dragging and dropping lines of code, but research shows that this approach works.

Disclaimer: I worked on Alice.

Begin with Turtle graphics in Python.

I would use the turtle graphics which comes standard with Python. It is visual, simple and you could use this environment to introduce many programming concepts like iteration and procedure calls before getting too far into syntax. Consider the following interactive session in python:

>>> from turtle import *
>>> setup()
>>> title("turtle test")
>>> clear()
>>>
>>> #DRAW A SQUARE
>>> down()        #pen down
>>> forward(50)   #move forward 50 units
>>> right(90)     #turn right 90 degrees
>>> forward(50)
>>> right(90)
>>> forward(50)
>>> right(90)
>>> forward(50)
>>>
>>> #INTRODUCE ITERATION TO SIMPLIFY SQUARE CODE
>>> clear()
>>> for i in range(4):
        forward(50)
        right(90)
>>>
>>> #INTRODUCE PROCEDURES   
>>> def square(length):
        down()
        for i in range(4):
            forward(length)
            right(90)
>>>
>>> #HAVE STUDENTS PREDICT WHAT THIS WILL DRAW
>>> for i in range(50):
        up()
        left(90)
        forward(25)
        square(i)
>>>
>>> #NOW HAVE THE STUDENTS WRITE CODE TO DRAW
>>> #A SQUARE 'TUNNEL' (I.E. CONCENTRIC SQUARES
>>> #GETTING SMALLER AND SMALLER).
>>>
>>> #AFTER THAT, MAKE THE TUNNEL ROTATE BY HAVING
>>> #EACH SUCCESSIVE SQUARE TILTED

In trying to accomplish the last two assignments, they will have many failed attempts, but the failures will be visually interesting and they'll learn quickly as they try to figure out why it didn't draw what they expected.

Python Challenge

I think that once he has the basics (variables, loops, etc) down you should try to help him find something specific that he is interested in and help him learn the necessities to make it happen. I know that I am much more inclined and motivated to do something if it's of interest to me. Also, make sure to let him struggle though some of the tougher problems, nothing is more satisfying than the moment you figure it out on your own.

A good resource to teach young people is the free eBook "Invent your own games with Python":

http://pythonbook.coffeeghost.net/book1/IYOCGwP_book1.pdf

One I used with my kids is CEEBot. It's not python, but it teaches C / Java style programming in a fun, robot-programming kind of game. It is aimed at 10-15 year olds, but it is a really good one.

A couple of other starting platforms:

• A good programmable calculator (that's what I learnt on back in the 70s), and HP25 then HP41, now TI69, etc.
• Interactive Fiction platforms, like "Inform 7" provide another angle on the whole thing
• Flash/ActionScript

All of these are different and engaging, and any one of these might spark the kind of interest that is required to get a beginner of and running.

LBB

Whatever language and environment you choose, if the student wants to learn for professional reasons or to do "real" programming (whatever that is), have them start by writing their starter programs¹ on paper and taking them away to run. Come back with the output and/or error results and have them fix things on paper.

This isn't especially harder at first than doing it on-screen and hitting run, but it will make things much easier when they start to discover the wonderful world of bugs.

1) short, "Hello, World!"-type programs that still have some logic and/or calculations, do this up to a few programs that can have bugs