[ggggtez]

I politely disagree... My first programming was using the scaffolding of game engines. After a few years of those kinds of toys was I exposed to C, where I only knew how to use ASCII printed to the screen as output.

For a while, I used both the game engine and C. There were many ideas I wanted to try, that I could simply execute faster with the majority of the engine already in place. Exposure to C let me do things the game engine didn't support, but at the cost of losing graphics.

If your kid doesn't like C64... it doesn't mean "there is nothing that scratch will be able to do". Scratch supports graphics, sound, and more. C64 supports, at best, blocky graphics with ~16 total colors. And even then, the nuances of sprite limits, etc... It can get in the way.

Kids like games. Don't underestimate the value of graphics and sound support as a motivating factor.