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Comment by creer | Hacker News Reader

Scratch is amazing. https://scratch.mit.edu/

And a slightly different direction than what you describe. Nowadays a complete "basic environment" on a computer (say a Raspberry Pi, sure why not, but perhaps simply a used laptop) feels too complicated. Far more complicated than DOS was.

Scratch is actually both interesting for kids and a seriously competent programming environment. They can explore; they can implement basic games; they can implement ambitious games or other directions like story telling. And possibly (but not all that easily) open for cooperation, cooperating on larger projects with others.

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100% agree with this. I grew up on a TRS-80 and so much wanted to share my nostalgia, or a some modern form of it with my daughter. Turns out using Scratch gives her the same core excitement, empowerment and wonder I experienced typing out games in BASIC but in an environment that allows so much more with so much less toil. That feeling of being able to create things, to get a machine to do what you want to do is captured so well. To top it of there is a community of creators and people sharing tutorials. The source code to every project made and shared by others is just a click away... the learning opportunities are endless. I am so grateful for this platform!

I recently ran across Juno: New Origins [1] (formerly SimpleRockets 2), which is a game where you build your own rockets / cars / drones / etc. Not only is it a great introduction to basic physics and maths concepts, the game also has a visual programming language that is so similar to Scratch I initially thought it must be some kind of plugin for Scratch.

The beauty of this for novices is that it's a relatively gentle, and not overly open entry into the world of programming. Initially, you may use it to hard-code and automate some repetitive tasks, like setting camera and target settings on your rockets. Soon after, you might create a script to auto-launch a rocket, with various degrees of intelligence or hard-codedness. Later on, you might create auto-hover, auto-land and similar scripts, which also get you into the world of basic physics equations, possibly various coordinate systems, etc.

All the while, you're essentially having fun, and can always leave the programming to the side for a while if you're stumped. I think it's an ideal way for kids to learn a lot of basics.

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/870200/Juno_New_Origins/ (the Steam page seems to do a better job of explaining the game

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