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Comment by idancali | Hacker News Reader

I actually thought about what I should start with if I were to teach coding and you're right I would probably start with something that's interpreted first of all. I was thinking Ruby , perhaps Python, you're right.

But the crazy thing is that I didn't plan the whole thing. It was more of a "lets build an app together" type of thing. My kids and I have been talking for a while about building an iPhone game together so that's where the whole iOS thing came from.

But you raised a good point. If you had a choice, what would be the best language to start off kids with? And maybe you're right, maybe there should be a new language built just for this purpose.

Maybe a bunch of us coding dads can create an open-source mini-lang of some sort with the sole purpose of teaching kids to code.

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I feel the language is not as important as the standard library. It should be easy to make interesting things happen. This is where classic BASIC implementations were great. You could just say 'LINE 1,1,50,50' and there was a line.

How many lines of code would it take to draw a line and circle in objective C? How many of those lines would be indecipherable boilerplate?

I'd love to see Logo have a bit of a revival. It's great in that kids can start making pictures immediately, and learn more sophisticated syntax as they need it. The only thing that would make it more appealing to children would be a physical turtle. Maybe a pen plotter would be a reasonable substitute.

I also like that it can be completely open-ended what kids do, like crayons and paper instead of the awful stuff they have to do in computer labs at school. (play stupid games that drill the facts you'll need on the standardized test; win virtual money you can spend on accessories for your avatar; vomit) See Seymour Papert for similar rants.

All that to say, a slight modernization of UCBLogo would be a fantastic project.

I figured you didn't start out with the intention, but yes, i agree that building a simple language for kids would be a very good idea. Perhaps you wouldn't even need words at all. The entire point of generative grammar, if i'm not mistaken, is that logic is pre-programmed into the brain.

You know a long time ago I used to "code" in this language called LabView and it was all graphical. It was designed for electrical engineers. I remember working with electrical engineers that had no idea about coding and they would be able to build complex systems in LabView. You would drag and drop a box and attach it to another box with a connector and that would be a loop, etc. Really awesome. Maybe something visual like that, with colors, animations etc would work for kids.

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