[totalforge]

Succinctly explains why programming can be rewarding to do.

It also describes the playground people of a certain age had: 'READY>'

I hear kids these days can do well learning Python - if they can get an adult to install the dev tools. There's got to be something as accessible and interactive as BASIC was, and that should be everywhere.

[kenjackson]

It's the web browser. Just open up notepad (or whatever the default text editor is) and start coding. Start with HTML and then add some JS.

[Timothee]

If you want to go this route I'd go one step further: just use the console in the web browser.

It's pretty much as accessible and everywhere as BASIC was.

[peteretep]

A thousand times this. I got really in to programming when I realized I could create ... and then share with anyone to whom I could get a URL

[_frog]

That's kind of the goal of Hackety Hack[1], to provide a framework for learning to program coupled with fun, simple libraries for graphics, sound and whatnot.

[1]: http://hackety-hack.com/

[cturner]

There's been lots of cool tools recently - unix in a abrowser and the like. Does anyone know of a z80- or 6502-in-a-browser?

I found this, but I want the prompt. http://www.visual6502.org/JSSim/index.html

It should be easier to do machine code programming in a browser sandbox, because the sandbox could give you tools for viewing memory.

[chromatic]

How about a BASIC running in a web browser?

[edtechdev]

Unfortunately we still aren't quite there yet, although just about everything else has been ported to run on javascript: https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of-lang...

And making basic/visual basic on top of javascript is a little challenging since it is case-insensitive and statically typed (later versions).

But I'd especially recommend Scratch from MIT for kids: http://scratch.mit.edu/ Many people are working on ports or similar tools in flash and html5, but none are quite there yet.

Also see the game Light Bot (1 or 2): http://www.silvergames.com/light-bot-2

And for older folks, some nice in browser development sites include http://www.playmycode.com/ (uses a ruby-like language) and http://pixieengine.com/ (uses coffeescript)

And for making websites see kodingen.com or playing with javascript, see jsfiddle or jsdo.it or processingjs.

[chromatic]

I've been working with a couple of other people on http://www.clubcompy.com/ which runs completely in the browser.

[brs]

For those of us who grew up with QBasic: http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=92