A lot of the responses here seeking a modern alternative to this experience seem to be focusing on hardware. In a way that's not surprising but I think it's a b

A lot of the responses here seeking a modern alternative to this experience seem to be focusing on hardware. In a way that's not surprising but I think it's a bit of a shame. That's because I think we have a platform today that can rival the ease and immediate feedback of those early computers: the web browser. There are probably a couple things needed to complete the picture. 1) A nice basic library that can serve as an immediate stepping stone to the UI. There's probably some out there already that are very beginner friendly. 2) Some kind of REPL/IDE like browser extension to make it easy to dive in right away. Something a bit easier for kids to wrap their head around than the developer tools of today, but also incorporating a basic editor so they can edit in place, save files etc. I'm not really sure about the form of (2) or how vital it is, but it certainly wouldn't hurt.