What Language for a kid

[David Rysdam]

Paul Beaudet <inof8or at gmail.com> writes:
> One thing I really want to recommend against is scratch or mindstorm. I
> think they are both really fun and all, but no one that solely uses
> graphical code block type systems self identify as a programmer or has
> confidence to tackle issues that involve code. Honestly it defeats the
> whole point of the exposure by making code look like a toy.

No, sorry, I have to completely disagree with this. "Doesn't look like
code" has nothing to do with anything.

What Scratch is great at is abstracting "how do I describe and debug an
algorithm" out from "how do I speak in this weird language and use these
weird tools". Teaching someone to program has nothing to do with how to
format Python/C/Java/Lisp code. Using pre-formatted blocks is a great
way to introduce those real fundamentals.

It is absolutely true (so far) that if you want to write "real" programs
you have to move beyond Scratch. But that doesn't make it a bad place to
start. But it is also true that if you want to write "real" programs,
just typing well-formatted C isn't enough--you have to understand when
and how to use conditionals, loops, functions and data structures.

For some people, using the tools is the fun part and if they happen to
learn some concepts that's a bonus. Those people might want to start
with Python or even C. Other people are interested in the concepts but
struggling with the tools is the barrier. For those people, Scratch is a
great introduction.