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Comment by zahlman | Hacker News Reader

> The full app store might be too much for younger children (mummy what's a flatpak?)

More to the point, they won't know what to look for, or might decide on something inappropriate (or even just unexpectedly hard to use).

> eg Minecraft and scratch and then a (simple!!) Python IDE.

If the kid is interested in and ready for creating a program by actually typing in text, a plain text editor (that can be Xed or Kate or whatever) plus the command line will probably serve better. The simplest functional IDE is really the built-in IDLE, and it's IMX not pleasant to use by comparison. The built-in command-line REPL, on the other hand, improved substantially in 3.13.

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> More to the point, they won't know what to look for, or might decide on something inappropriate (or even just unexpectedly hard to use).

Why does it matter. They try something out, it doesn't work, they try something different out next time. A child learning on it's own always works like that. They try random things out and see what works.

My parents gave an RPi and I had root, because I needed to install it myself. I broke it a few times, but why is that a bad thing? It's not like I could destroy anything important.

I had a long debate whether a graphical programming environment like Scratch was better than typing out a classical language such as Python, my friends sided with Scratch but I ended up teaching (a bunch of 11-year-olds in a school) Python using the pyturtle library for simple graphics.

The advantage of Python includes being a "real" language - you can literally make money with what you learn. Also, the program as textual artifact means in can be read out and discussed.

[Python is great; my comment is only within block-based languages] For those actively teaching¹, consider Snap! (https://snap.berkeley.edu/) over/after Scratch. It's nearly a superset, similarly "low-floor" but much "higher ceiling" powerful language.

Data structures, control structures/message passing, functional programming... It's really "Scheme in Scratch clothing" under the hood.

In particular, its "build your own blocks" facilities are powerful enough (including macros i.e. custom control structures receiving "body" arguments as unevaluated lambdas) for you to build any scaffolding they need to focus on concepts you want them to learn at this stage.

¹If you don't have much time to sit with them, Scratch may win on "go find tutorials on youtube".

mu editor looks pretty good for kids to learn python. unfortunately it is no longer supported.

thonny is an ok replacement, but doesn't feel as kid friendly to me.

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