Teaching programming concepts to kids

[Blake Barnett]

On Nov 11, 2006, at 9:00 AM, Michael Torrie wrote:

> <snip>

> Anyway, our modern IDEs are similar to what Borland started, but  
> way to
> complicated to get a young child started on, in my opinion.  I think
> bringing back integrated, interpreted, immediate environments like
> BASIC-256  is a good idea.  The Logo environment is also great.  Seems
> to me our modern languages such as Java, C#, C++ don't lend themselves
> well to a 5 year old (which is when I started programming).  Python  
> just
> might, though, except that a 5-8 year old may not always understand  
> the
> concept of white space.  And I do think it is important to first teach
> procedural programming first.  OOP and event-driven are great, but as
> the computer itself is procedural, if we want to teach budding  
> computer
> scientists how computers actually work inside, we need to start on
> procedural programming (and polling), then probably event-driven (help
> them understand interrupt-driven stuff), and then introduce them to
> other artificial abstractions that they will eventually use  
> exclusively.

I'm amazed none of the other rubyists mentioned this[1] yet.  :)   
It's a fully interactive ruby environment, with walkthroughs and  
Why's delectable humor to boot.

1. http://tryruby.hobix.com/

-Blake