As a 13 year old, I learned to program in Small Basic, a Microsoft educational version of Basic. There was a pdf[1] that explained the basic concepts of programming in 69 pages. I loved it.

I don't think I would've even liked programming had I used Scratch (or Snap) instead of Small Basic. Scratch feels too dumbed-down, limited and clunky.

Maybe Scratch is good enough for 5-9 year olds, but for older kids, I think nowadays Javascript + HTML5 canvas is much better. Javascript lets you see your creation in the browser, which feels like the "real world", because it is. Additionally, it lets you do basically anything you can imagine in a browser. And you code using regular text, which feels much better than colored boxes.

And Small Basic is still better than Scratch I think, even though it seems kind of abandoned by Microsoft.

[1] (notice: direct downlad) http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/0/6/90616372-C4BF-4...