I've taught kids both Scratch and JavaScript. I think Scratch is much better for pre-teens, for the following reasons: - Scratch has an integrated 2d game engi

I've taught kids both Scratch and JavaScript. I think Scratch is much better for pre-teens, for the following reasons: - Scratch has an integrated 2d game engine, sprite editor, and asset library. This makes it easy for kids to make something of interest to them right away, including those who don't pick up coding right away. I've had kids who struggled with complex coding but were still able to enjoy Scratch by making lightly-interactive stories / art. - Most children can drag blocks faster than they can type. - Most kids these days aren't familiar with a lot of desktop computing concepts we take for granted. For instance, they mostly don't know what files are, or how to copy and paste text. It would be nice if I could teach them all of that before any coding -- but that's generally not what they feel they're there for. - Scratch shows the current value of variables by default. This helps kids to grasp the concept of a variable and to understand why their program is behaving the way it is. - Scratch is a website, which makes it easy for kids to show others what they did. This makes it more gratifying for kids and parents. IIRC, the Scratch team also found that this aspect is especially appealing to girls.