I believe there is great value in introducing learners to tools that are so simple and easy to use that they can just get started and focus on programming witho

I believe there is great value in introducing learners to tools that are so simple and easy to use that they can just get started and focus on programming without having to wrestle with tools and incidental complexity. This is a design challenge: crafting tools that are laser-focussed on their actual purpose and trying to make it as straightforward as possible for users to do what they intent to do. It takes empathy and clear, simple and pragmatic thinking, which can be surprisingly hard for many people and I believe it becomes harder the more we become entrenched in our profession and its way of doing things. In my own experience, if I had not discovered Processing I am not sure if I would have actually gone down this path and become a developer. Before that, I had so many frustrating experiences with tools and especially the command line. Everything was just so opaque to me, since I had no one with programming experience to guide me through and when I tried looking something up, I felt like I was going down a neverending rabbit hole. Now I really enjoy digging into the most obscure tools and programming languages, use Vim and Emacs daily (yes, you can like both) and actually enjoy writing shell scripts. I think if beginners actually get to experience what it is like to program something that is meaningful to them, that they care about or just enjoy, they will become motivated to learn all the hard and annoying things as well. But they should not be stopped by hundreds of landmines and roadblocks before they even get there.