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Comment by cyrialize | Hacker News Reader

Other platforms similar to Scratch actually teach Python!

They start off with drag and drop coding and then Python. The Python is actually pretty fun, you write code to make animals move around and get stars.

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Which platforms are you referring to?

Not OP, but CodeWars is a platform I heard about that fits the description

I think maybe Lego mindstorms does this.

Also not OP, but I literally just learned about Hedy [1] today. No experience except from clicking through it for 20 minutes, but it looks quite interesting, taking somebody from a language with a very simple syntax (and limited functionality) to full blown Python, one level at a time, by making the language gradually more complicated (and more powerful).

[1] https://www.hedycode.com/

I also quickly went through the basic tasks in 17 levels of Hedy in about 20 mins. (I just know a little programming.) Hedy is text-based and introduces ideas such as: print, entering variables, if, else, repeat, ... I really liked the gradual approach, which keeps you going forward onto the next level.

There are additional tasks at each level (see tabs at top) which I didn't try. It seems that these tasks are best done from left to right in order to get the basic idea of what is required.

Do kids who start programming with Hedy get confused about when a piece of text is interpreted as a variable vs. a string?

https://www.hedycode.com/hedy/2#default

The way it automatically detects variable within strings seems to magical. OTOH AIUI Hedy has been developed alongside research on what works for kids.

IIRC one of Hedy’s unique features is that it gradually increases in complexity as you “level up” including introducing what we’d call “breaking changes”. At level 4, they start allowing and requiring you to quote string literals: https://www.hedycode.com/hedy/4#default

Nice!

I'm excited for my son to try it out once he's gotten comfortable with scratch.

At the moment, he's more interested in the visual design part of scratch than the programming, so I probably need to find some cool existing animations to inspire him.

i found it very confusing that the introduction at each level links to the next level but does not tell you to try the exercises. i didn't even realize that the tabs were exercises per level as i consider tabs a higher level hierarchy compared to the previous/next buttons. (i expect those to work within a tab, and not switch to a different row of tabs)

and also, why introduce an echo command in level 1 only to drop it in level 2? they could have waited and introduced ask in level 2 or 3 even.

i love the quiz questions though, they even make me, as an experienced programmer, think

Not OP, but Makecode does this.

It's almost as if Python was designed to make it easy for kids to learn how to program.

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