For application development, I'd start with an environment that actually tried to make things simpler for the programmer and showed how you can use programming to tweak a design first before programming from scratch - an IDE (see Microsoft's beginner resources http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/beginner/default.aspx ) or game development environment (like gamemaker or XNA).
See also actual curricula for high school or non-computer science students (CS0 courses), like
http://csunplugged.org/
http://scratch.mit.edu/
For application development, I'd start with an environment that actually tried to make things simpler for the programmer and showed how you can use programming to tweak a design first before programming from scratch - an IDE (see Microsoft's beginner resources http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/beginner/default.aspx ) or game development environment (like gamemaker or XNA).
See also actual curricula for high school or non-computer science students (CS0 courses), like
http://csta.acm.org/
http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/mediaComp-teach
I would not throw SICP at someone who didn't already know how to program.