Its debatable whether it counts as actual "programming", but one of my first related learning experiences was designing starcraft and warcraft 3 maps. While I a

Its debatable whether it counts as actual "programming", but one of my first related learning experiences was designing starcraft and warcraft 3 maps. While I almost didn't write any _code_, I nevertheless had to construct conditionals, triggers, events, loops etc through the GUI which probably helped a lot when I started actual coding during my Java class. Plus it was so fun too - I could make something quite tangible and "braggable" (a custom game map I could play with friends) without too much difficulty and syntax overhead. Sometimes I wonder if such game map editors should be utilized more in teaching programming to students; they certainly got _me_ interested in programming.