[geezerjay]

> HTML/CSS is the right kind of programming to introduce to kids. It teaches a lot of the cognitive skills that you need as a programmer (attention to detail, what you see is _not_ what you get, ability to abstract a problem);

I strognly disagree. Playing around with markup languages only trains a person to expect a computer to map a particular input to an output. That's far from programming, let alone real-world programming practice. Writing software is much more than getting a computer to output something in a one-shot process. Making these sort of claims does a diservice to anyone interested in programming because it paints a rosy picture of how programming is trivial and free from any intellectual challenge, which goes directly down the crapper once the first crash or bug needs to be solved.

[csallen]

The parent comment said HTML/CSS the right kind of programming to introduce to kids. Your disagreement is based around it not being the final end-all be-all representation of the complete set of features and challenges of programming. You're optimizing for accuracy and completeness, whereas the parent was optimizing for appeal and ease-of-learning.

As someone who's spent many months teaching people to code from scratch, it seems to me you're ignoring just how tough it can be for people (especially kids) to learn challenging new information. Most will quit when they hit a wall.

In my opinion, baby steps are much wiser when the goal is to teach.

[trgn]

I agree, they're not a full programming language, they lack the aspects you describe. But they are a simple introduction to programming, work on a lot of levels, and can engage a broad range of students.

I would disagree with one thing. Writing HTML/CSS most certainly is an intellectual challenge, especially for beginners, and does engage parts of the programmer's brain.