[herodoturtle]

I guess it depends on their competency, but something like https://scratch.mit.edu/ is really good for really young kids.

Alternatively if your kids are a bit further along then why not try re-create your childhood experience?

In my case I'd spin up a virtual box with DOS 6 installed and a copy of QBasic, because hacking away at the GORILLA.BAS source code to try make my bananas more explosive was how it all started for me at a very young age.

Point being - QBasic was pretty easy to pick up with little external support.

Hope that helps!

That being said, what has your experience with Python been like? What else have you tried?

[dagw]

One problem I've found as the expectations of what a computer game or program 'should' look like has exploded. Making a circle move across the screen doesn't hold the same fascination with kids today as it used to. GORILLA.BAS was pretty close to a game that used to cost real money when it first game out.

Back in my day I could look at the very simple game I wrote in a a few hundred lines of Basic and see a path from there to commercial games that came in a box. Today my daughter looks at the simple thing we did in Scratch, then looks at Fornite, and sees no connection between the two.

[IggleSniggle]

I guess it depends on exposure. My son was moving the cat around in ScratchJr last week and he is definitely HOOKED. We've hardly touched it and he keeps talking about it / wanting me to give him simple loop instructions for him to act out as if he was the ScratchJr cat.