The title makes me cringe a little. It implies the text-based nature of most programming languages is a problem, even THE problem. It is, if you're trying to

The title makes me cringe a little. It implies the text-based nature of most programming languages is a problem, even THE problem. It is, if you're trying to simply get young kids to use <insert language here>, vs get them to use said languages to interesting problems. The problem as I see it is that parents across the country are trying to prepare their children for a job landscape which may change radically between now and when they graduate high school by getting them while they're young and attempting to introduce them to coding as early as 3. Not programming, not learning how to solve problems with an algorithmic mindset. Coding. As in getting them comfortable with slinging around functions that build a website using magic. Really, we should be teaching them to do the thing that we're trying to do with programming languages in the first place, which is solve problems with an algorithmic mindset. I think SpriteBox gets it, kinda, where it falls short is that in the end they're still hung up by the whole "let's teach kids how to code" trap and gradually replace the icons with text and do this weird thing where icons are indented because text-based code is indented. In the end kids know how these languages work, and how to do simple things with them, but they've learned all of this within the context of what looks like a platforming game. Extending this to the act of creating something is different. If you really want to teach kids how to program, create an environment that teaches them how to build and create something cool using a few simple and easy to understand rules. Allow them to experiment with the rules to see what happens. Make it so that the upper threshold for how you can bend the rules, combine rules, etc, is to all concerned essentially non-existent. Enable and reward creativity, which is something a lot of "coding" games and toys and whatever simply don't do. They enable and reward you to help a cute robot walk in a damn line.