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Kid's Programming Language:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/coding4fun/coolapplicati ons/KPL/default.aspx

http://www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com/

Check out http://www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com/, it's a pretty full featured language + IDE that hides many annoying OS details.

http://www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com/

I took someone's advice from Slashdot a while back and tried to teach my daughter programming using Squeak. I made the mistake of stumbling around, thinking we would both learn about it as we go. It was a disaster, and after a half hour of fumbling with it, I gave up.

I started thinking about how to approach programming with her again, and I found myself wishing she could work with computers the way I did when I was a kid. Then I realized that all the computers I loved are still around as emulators. So I'm going to give it a shot again with a vintage BASIC book for kids and a C64 emulator. When she's comfortable with BASIC, I'll move her to KPL. I don't think kids will be put off by the primitive graphics if you start them early enough. My brother has been writing Atari games for fun, and my daughters enjoy those.

When I started programming, the thing I found that was hardest was working with the keyboard. BASIC on the Palm or Windows CE might work well as an option, with handwriting recognition.

Even though kids don't have BASIC, there are IDE's publicly available that allow kids to learn how to program in a fun way. I learned about this company while reading through Technology and Learning (magazine geared towards teachers/tech admins in the K-12 arena). http://www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com/

KPL uses the dotNET framework and allows kids to program in .NET. Now, I know many of your open-source folks are going to freak on that, but, any impression of programming on young minds is better than none. :-)

Have you looked at http://www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com/? It has a simple syntax along with advanced graphics. It was designed to be used in classrooms to teach kids how to program.

Are you seriously telling me that with languages like VB.net, C#, Ruby, javascript and other 'easy' languages, kids can't learn to code these days? I call BS on this. Sure, I started on an Apple IIe in 4th grade, and gradually moved up to real languages (C, PHP, etc etc) eventually, but that doesn't mean the 'lack' of BASIC stops kids from coding.

There are even languages developed solely to interest kids in programming.

http://www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_(software)

I'm sure there's more out there, but Alice was the one I remembered, and found KPL on the way.

No, there are no more barriers to programming than any other science.

In addition to Scheme, others have mentioned Logo which is a wonderful language that many of us learned in our youth. I would also suggest looking at Kid's Programming Language, Squeak (a Smalltalk implementation that seems tailor-made for the way kids think and learn), Alice and perhaps even Ruby or Python both of which have the advantage of a wealth of documentation and code samples. You might even consider the first lesson to be a discussion of programming languages, their differences and their applications. Context always makes it easier to learn specifics. The Hello World! page is a good place to grab examples of different languages for comparision.

Do NOT teach them a markup language (although McDonald's is hiring) or BASIC (there is no need to damage another generation of brains). Last but not least, if anyone suggests PERL thank them for their suggestion and get away from them as fast as possible as they are clearly mentally unstable.

I teach computers at an international school in Tokyo Japan. My students vary in age from grade 6 to grade 9. As you can imagine, they also vary in English language ability. Here is my curriculum:

Grade 6: Drape - A drag and drop programming language (No longer free but you can downloa it from my homepage).

Grade 7: Game Maker - A more complex drag and drop programming language created by the same person who created Drape.

Grade 8: Kids Programming Language - A BASIC-like programming language with easy to use graphics (sprite) capabilities and built in functions such as collision detection. Note that an updated version with 3D graphics capablities will soon be released (around Sept. 2006).

Grade 9: JavaScript - I use a program called Max's HTML Beauty++ for editing JavaScript and NVU for web design.

I have also used Small Basic and my own JavaScript Interactive Fiction engine.

You can find downloads of most of these programs and some lesson plans at my homepage.

Feel free to contact me if you have any further questions.

YOU WIN GAME? Maybe a bad example for child-educational programming demonstrations.

This is the first version of Ubuntu that works for me pretty much out of the box. I got the CDs on Friday from ship-it and had the AMD-64 version of the system installed on my 20 GB partition within 1/2 an hour. And then about 1/2 an hour later had a VMWare copy of Kubuntu loaded also.

In Native format the Wireless works better and at least recognizes my USB Wireless adapter, though it gives me a Linux version of the BSOD when I try to connect... it just freezes the system entirely.

In VMWare mode it works perfectly, mostly since Windows is handling the Wireless connection for the system. I am not sure whether I'll use it, though, since it doesn't really offer me anything that I don't already have on Windows. In a way I wished that it shipped with Kdevelop or some other IDE so that we could use this as a way to entice young developers to begin coding on Linux rather than using http://kidsprogramminglanguage.com/ or the now free C#/VBasic tools offered by Microsoft.

I have not tried Python, so I cannot comment how hard or easy it is.

But I have tried Kids Programming Language (now known as KPL) and it is truly excellent for both kids and adults who remember programming in GWBasic. It is simple, and allows graphics manipulation without the need to understand programming abstrations like classes and so forth. It reminds me very much of Atari Basic that I learned on my Atari 800XL.

My son, now 10, is learning to program using KPL. It is very easy and he has been making the typical beginner programs -- moving a graphic around the screen, listening for keyboard inputs that has some effect on the graphic sprite.

All in all it is very nice. The only thing I am not happy about is its reliance upon MS Net 1.0/2.0 in order to run.

Kids Programming Language can be found at http://www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com/ and is not just for kids, like I mentioned above. I am finding it a complete blast from the past!

Seriously, the complexity associated with modern development tools is way too steep a curve for your average 14 year old to wrap their heads around. We're trying to address this to a certain extent with the Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions, but it's a tough problem. It's no longer as simple as getting a bare-bones BASIC interpreter built into your computer's ROM. I think there have been some cool advances in this space, though, in the recent past. Take the Kids' Programming Language, for example. It's is expressly aimed at the younger crowd. I've seen a demo of it (the guys from Morrison Schwartz who created it came by to give a talk on it last year), and I must say that I am suitably impressed their work. Check it out if you have a younger child who you want to introduce to development.

How does 35 kid-simple lines of code sound, to fly your 3D starfighter model through an interstellar skyscape? :D How does freeware, community-translated educational software already available in 16 languages sound? Watch for it at SIGGRAPH 2006, and all over the Web. The URL is, of course, http://www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com/.

Try out Kid's Programming Language (KPL). http://www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com/ It's a language based on .NET 1.1 and is simple enough for kids to create wonderfully rich graphical and console based applications. It's all free to download and once installed there are plenty of example programs and a full set of learning programs to get you started. All KPL programs can be converted into C# or VB.NET allowing you to scale up to these languages once you've mastered the basic programming skills.

Try Kids Programming Language (KPL). http://www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com/ A free download of a simplified version of C#. It requires .NET 1.1 but it does allow you to create some wonder applications with outrageously simple syntax. Examples included with the download include simple games and mathmatical exercises, as well as program logic examples such as sorting. If you use KPL you'll begin the programming journey in a very scalable way, because all KPL programs can be converted into their equivalent C# or VB.NET equivalents; so when you are ready you can jump into full on .NET programming!

KPL == Kid's Programming Language, which makes a game out of programming games, and then playing them. It's what it sounds like, it's free, and it's fun. It's been 20 since anyone in software thought about beginners. Bout damn time, wouldn't you say?http://www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com/