I see, i read your question too fast. Using scratch/alice/nxt/what-have-you as a tool to show what compsci is and how it can be exciting is fantastic, i just wo

I see, i read your question too fast. Using scratch/alice/nxt/what-have-you as a tool to show what compsci is and how it can be exciting is fantastic, i just wouldn't use it as a method for teaching programming. My bad. Another thing to look at is the Lego NXT robot, which uses very Scratch-like software (drag and drop action and control flow elements) to control a real robot that they can put together with Lego pieces. I wouldn't downplay the importance of having a python prompt or a c compiler available, though. It may not seem as exciting as drag and drop programs, but to some kids it is more exciting (it was to me when i started programming, certainly).