[maryrosecook]

I feel that Ruby, Python and BASIC are too complicated for five year olds.

My aim with Isla was to make a language that avoids as much programming jargon as possible, and assumes no prior familiarity with programming. This is why I made it natural-language-like and omitted punctuation from the syntax as far as possible.

[nawitus]

I think 5 year olds should begin with graphical 'programming' environments like Klik or The Games Factory (those are old now, but I'm sure there are modern replacements). They offer simple event based programming and the children don't need to bother with syntax errors etc. They also have a built-in graphical edition so it's a bit more fun than just playing with a terminal.

After a few years it's easy to continue with basic-like languages.