Simplest good beginner's language

[jwantz at hpcc2.hpcc.noaa.gov]

Hey Janina,
Actually the simplest structured language ever written was Comal.  It was 
written for the commodore 64 and was supposed to be written for the Apple 
2e and IBM.  Unfortunately I don't think it ever got off of the ground.  
One nice thing you could do in Comal is do switch-like comparisons using 
strings.  Now if that language was still around I'd recommend it for 
beginners!  It was my first structured language though I'd been 
programming in BASIC and FORTRAN for quite a while by that time.

     Jim