[lf-non]

Curious why you think Scratch is cumbersome ? Is it primarily the amount of js the scratch vm needs ?

I got (re-) introduced to scratch few months back while collaborating with some people in the media lab (where scratch originated) and have had fun tinkering with blocks creating funny animations etc. in my free time.

[lgvld]

Just in term of user interface, actually. Something makes me feel awkard, I don’t know why... It looks like I am manipulating colored potatoes, while I am expecting to manipulate data, by writing pure functions... ;-)

But maybe children love the way Scrath looks?

[abecedarius]

You might enjoy http://www.toontalk.com/ for something more like manipulating data. (I played with it years ago before the web version was made.)