[aedron]

It's not a dead end path, it's not far from how Unity works (of course you may consider Unity a dead end path).

I think your stance is needlessly puritan. At some point, the program has to actually do something and put it on the screen. Whether that is printing lines of text or moving a colorful sprite in some way is really not that different, except one is a lot more appealing to a young learner.

[jasonkester]

Perhaps we're talking past each other. Scratch literally has little graphical puzzle pieces that you drag around and dock together to create programs.

Beyond that it's pretty similar to the thing I (and you) recommend.

[jessaustin]

The purpose of the puzzle pieces is to prevent syntax errors, right? Do kids (or anyone, now that I consider the question) really need to deal with syntax errors?

[Wowfunhappy]

The puzzle pieces:

1. Prevent syntax errors.

2. Remove the need to type on a keyboard.

3. Remove the need to memorize basic commands.

The kids will eventually need to learn #2, but I think it's great that they can do programming in the interim.

#3 will start to come naturally once you've dragged enough if-else blocks in Scratch. Scratch is an on-ramp.

I will point out btw that Scratch is turing-complete.

[AstralStorm]

Yes, just like they do when talking.

The problem is not syntax, the problem is that they're bad at typing on a keyboard.

I suspect it's mostly because the keyboard is too big and stiff...

[jessaustin]

Scratch is designed to encourage children, not discourage them. Syntax errors are the bane of learning to program for the first time.

As sibling comment indicates, it's also good to be able to code on a tablet, but I didn't think that would be as convincing to parent who seems opposed to graphical interfaces in general.

[zozbot234]

> Scratch literally has little graphical puzzle pieces that you drag around and dock together

You could build a "little graphical puzzle pieces" tool for any AST. You could even enable it to be driven with any combination of keypress input and mouse- or touch-based drag and drop. (Or even expose a text-based dump, for "free-form" editing by advanced users.)

[jpindar]

I wonder if Unity and other game engines/IDEs are missing out by not making kid's versions.