Back in the 80\'s (yes another old guy) when I was playing with Vic-20\'s and C64s in Ireland I learned to program by writing games. Not so much typing in from magazines, but learning from my class mates and creating my own games.
I believe this is what created my passion for coding that for kids to really get the joy of coding, developing and tinkering they need to want to do it like I did. Writing a program to do an airline booking system or a system to catalog your music really isn\'t exciting.
For this reason I believe starting with game programming would be a great way to raise the excitement level to 11. It could also bring in the graphics and music lovers as this would be another way for them to create their art.
Now the Questions
Since the goal of the Raspberry Pi is to bring back the excitement and interest that existed in the 80s I was wondering what did you program when you started with computers and secondly are you still coding, either professionally or as a hobby?
Any suggestions on how to get kids excited about coding would also be welcome.
My answer:
Programmed games on a Vic-20 and C64 in BASIC and assembly. Permanently had a folder of graph paper for drawing new graphics.
I am not a professional developer or even in a technical role but the passion has stuck with me so I tinker with Arduino, web development in PHP and other techie stuff like writing a small program in Python for my kids in a few hours with no previous experience of Python.
[EDIT] I changed the Subject to better reflect the question.
More about what your first programs did rather than the language you used to program it.