A friend of mine is interested in learning how to program computers, but she knows nothing about programming. I suggested that Python might be a good language to start with, but after some googling, I couldn't find any tutorials that covered both programming and Python in an adequate way.

I don't want her to go through the tiresome "learn algorithms in pseudocode first" routine. Instead, I'd like a tutorial that will explain the basic ideas while working towards a real goal, e.g. a very simple console game.

Does anyone know of any such tutorials? Do you think that I'm mistaken in how I'm handling this? Is Python a bad choice? I know that something like C, C++ or Java won't work - too many details will be very counterproductive. On the other hand, I think that Lisp might be too mathematical and abstract. Python, on the other hand, will let her even do something like coding primitive graphical games in a short period of time.