I completely agree. My initial foray into programming was writing sites in PHP, and I learned a lot about logic, functions, classes, and structuring projects because of it— and my transition into other languages. Had I said I wanted to learn to program and someone tossed K&R at me and told me to "work through it by sheer force", I doubt I would have found the subject to be so interesting.

Certainly K&R is a must-read, but Joel's advice...

"If you can't get through this sequence, you're not going to be able to program, so you might as well give up now."

...is terrible. There is more than one way to introduce someone to programming.