Vaguely related, since a lot of people here are mentioning assembly as a first programming language for learners: Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming" and its associated fictitious "MMIX" processor ("MIX" on the volumes that aren't yet on their new edition).
Knuth's reasoning seems to be that higher-level languages go in and out of fashion all the time, but hardware and its associated assembly is quite sticky, so it's more "timeless". It's also a smaller set of primitives, so less overwhelming for the learner.
MMIX assembly is easier to understand than x86, having been designed specifically with learners in mind, and GCC even has a backend for MIX, so you can write C code and see how GCC would translate it to MIX assembly.
Knuth's reasoning seems to be that higher-level languages go in and out of fashion all the time, but hardware and its associated assembly is quite sticky, so it's more "timeless". It's also a smaller set of primitives, so less overwhelming for the learner.
MMIX assembly is easier to understand than x86, having been designed specifically with learners in mind, and GCC even has a backend for MIX, so you can write C code and see how GCC would translate it to MIX assembly.