For me, the "sweet spot" between "tools for kids" and "real" tools is Pico-8. It uses a "real" language (Lua), but the graphics interface is much easier to gr

For me, the "sweet spot" between "tools for kids" and "real" tools is Pico-8. It uses a "real" language (Lua), but the graphics interface is much easier to grok than mucking about with shaders and whatnot. To me, it doesn't feel like a toy, it just feels like a simpler tool. It's the tool that I use whenever I try teaching kids to program.