[geeks] Introductory programming language?

[Mouse]

My sister has just expressed an interest in learning some programming.
She's had some minimal exposure, but effectively is starting from zero.
I apparently (I don't recall) taught her a tiny bit of FORTRAN back
when I first learnt it myself (we're talking some 35 years ago) and she
took one summer course in Visual Basic which she never touched again
afterwards and says she doesn't remember anything from.  She is *not*
stupid by any stretch.

She is entirely (for these purposes) a Windows user.  So, I'm looking
for a language that has decent implementations for both Unices and
Windows, with the former open-source and the latter gratis or cheap -
that part isn't that hard - and is suitable as a first language for an
introduction to programming.

Some time ago, I had much the same issue with a friend, and the
language I settled on then was awk.  But I don't know whether awk
exists for Windows, and I don't know to what extent it would be a bad
fit for a Windows user if it does.

I'm not looking for hairy power or theoretical elegance here, or I'd be
going with C or Lisp or some such; I'm looking for (a) simple, but not
dumbed down to the point of being unable to do basic things and (b)
powerful enough to do minimally useful things relatively easily, so as
to get that "hey, I got something working!" buzz.  I think awk was a
good choice, and if there's a decent implementation for Windows I'll be
tempted to go that route again.  But it occurs to me that there may
well be better languages out there.

Any thoughts?

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