@eliasr
not python. it has a nice flat learning curve for the first few things and then becomes hell. the ecosystem is shit, you get errors for combining spaces and tabs, etc. those are things which seem completely bullshit and increase the "computers are magic" feel.

bash is better but maybe a bit crazy? on the other hand there are nice things like heredocs which are pretty useful. the idiom of piping things around and combining small tools is something nice to learn.

maybe TCL? it got Tk going for it. Tkinter in python just doesn't cut it, it's too complicated and crufty. kids like to see something graphical. TCL is pretty arcane though.

maybe something from the pascal family? wirth had good ideas for languages _and_ pedagogy. at least you'd have a sane language the kids learn then, without cruft and accumulated hacks like python.

mainstream languages are just horrible for this.