Pretty anecdotal, but it seems to strike a chord with a few people in here, like anecdotes tend to do... I like the HTML/CSS approach, and then tack on some JavaScript. No stupid assembler to keep track of. I've taught about 300 kids web design, and around 150 programming (rough estimate), and that's what stuck the best with the kids. Java, not so much. From JavaScript the sky's the limit. Personally I tried BASIC, but I really learned programming by going the PHP route, and onwards to Perl and Java. But the first thing I learned was HTML/CSS. If I could choose again, I'd go JavaScript first, and perhaps Python - another lovely language.