Personally, I think everybody should start with BASIC. No, really I do. At least first the first 2 weeks to 1 month. It's great for high school courses. It's simple enough that you can focus on very simple things like using variables, looping structures, conditionals, and calling subroutines without having to worry about frameworks, objects, and pointers. However, if you've already gotten past all that simple stuff, there's no reason you can't just keep on going with C++. It's a great language. And very useful. I think that people who have never programmed in C/C++ are really missing out on some fundamental things you should know about how things work on a lower level.
