Languages for children

[GWillow]

Hi,

I'd like to try and introduce my 10 year old into the world of programming. Are there any child friendly programming languages/environments you'd recommend?

I remember many years ago there was things liks 'STOS' on the Atari ST and 'AMOS' on the Amiga. I'm sure I've recently seen a language specifically aimed at children and games writing but for the life of me can't remember what it was called.

 

[~J~]

If it's a simple language for the children with some almost instance results, then the following may be a good start:

http://www.blitzbasic.com/ - Blitzbasic

http://darkbasic.thegamecreators.com/ - Dark Basic

http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker/ - Gamemaker

http://www.clickteam.com/eng/index.php - Multimedia Fusion.

The latter two are more "Point and Click" affairs, although do offer some drilldown into event driven commands.

 

[Pho]

Visual Basic? (joke )

http://blogs.msdn.com/coding4fun/archive/2006/10/31/912456.aspx maybe?

 

[wozzizname]

Might be worth having a look at Greenfoot -

http://www.greenfoot.org

 

[swinnie]

Might be worth having a look at Greenfoot -

http://www.greenfoot.org

I read about this a little while ago, and definitely looks like it'd be worth a go.

 

[GWillow]

Thanks everyone for the suggestons (even the VB). I'll give them a try this weekend.

I also found http://scratch.mit.edu/ wich I'll also try to checkout.

(Bet my son won't show any interest).

 

[TreeUK]

It looks like Microsoft are releasing an icon based programming language later this year.

It runs on XBox Live, called Kodu link here. It looks like an awesome start for children.

 

[chrisxuk]

Hi,

I'd like to try and introduce my 10 year old into the world of programming. Are there any child friendly programming languages/environments you'd recommend?

I remember many years ago there was things liks 'STOS' on the Atari ST and 'AMOS' on the Amiga. I'm sure I've recently seen a language specifically aimed at children and games writing but for the life of me can't remember what it was called.

Are normal programming languages too hard for you? (joking )

Not done much programming myself but as a 16 year old i've used Dark Basic and was quite easy to follow

 

[GWillow]

Are normal programming languages too hard for you? (joking )

It's not too easy running Cobol or RPG (the language not game type or weapon) on a home PC and I don't really know Java well enough to teach him, mmmmm, maybe he could learn it and teach me!!

 

[arty]

If you run Windows, I came across Small Basic recently and was pleasantly surprised. Might be worth a look

arty