Scratch and Alice look like actual programming to me. The odd features: You have a structured editor. You are tightly tied to a graphics library that focuses o

Scratch and Alice look like actual programming to me. The odd features: You have a structured editor. You are tightly tied to a graphics library that focuses on cartoon animation. I would prefer that you could have one feature or the other, or both, or neither. The structured editor is very important. It is like syntax highlighting, but it actively prevents syntax mistakes instead of just complaining. Structured editors usually come with non-standard languages, which is a shame. You could do a decent subset of most modern languages, even C. Code written in a normal editor could even be loaded into the structured editor as long as the code doesn't go outside the supported feature set. Look at the code, imagine the colorful shapes missing, and you can see a pretty ordinary text-based program. The graphics library is so typical. I suppose it is needed, sadly. Kids allegedly get bored with printf. I wonder if the kids who seem to require graphics are simply uninterested. If you can't simply enjoy the pure pleasure of manipulating data with code, programming might not be your thing. In any case, a graphics library is the norm.