As per your quote, Alice is used in middle school and university courses. So high school is square in the middle of the target audience. The issue with Alice i

As per your quote, Alice is used in middle school and university courses. So high school is square in the middle of the target audience. The issue with Alice is that graphical, block based coding is not at all an ergonomic way to code. It drives experts and novices both insane. Sure, C++ probably isn't the best for an intro CS courses, either, but Python with some wrappers over SDL to draw sprites is not only a better teaching tool it also forms a more useful springboard to build other projects later. The only good thing Alice does is reduce the scope of things you need to know in order to achieve tangible, compelling results. But that can be done without a block based editor. Graphical, block based coding seems to be a common attempt to make coding more approachable [2] but I don't really see any convincing arguments as to why. My take is that it a mix of 1) assumption that that students are intimidated by text, and 2) aesthetic appeal from people who don't actually have to use these tools. Yes, it's impressive to see a skater spin around in 3d with just a few blocks of code in a lecture, but it's another thing to actually use it. 2. E.g., https://developers.google.com/blockly https://developers.google.com/blockly