My first computer was a VIC-20 (I later got a Commodore 64), where you also start with a BASIC prompt. I too have been thinking about to the barriers to startin

My first computer was a VIC-20 (I later got a Commodore 64), where you also start with a BASIC prompt. I too have been thinking about to the barriers to starting to code. Last fall, I helped in my son's grade 8 class to teach them python programming. There we wanted the students to be able to start coding with minimal effort, and minimal magic. They already had MacBook Airs, which had python 2.7 already installed, so there was nothing to install. Then we concentrated on a few core programming constructs (no classes for example), and no libraries. This was an attempt to recreate the environment I had when I learnt to program on the VIC-20. I think it worked really well. The students were able to write fairly advanced (a few pages full of code) with that set-up. If you want to do more advanced programming, you'll need to install more, but for a start it was really good. I've written more about it here: https://henrikwarne.com/2017/12/17/programming-for-grade-8/ https://henrikwarne.com/2017/12/17/programming-for-grade-8/