I have had great experiences with Scratch, but I agree that it's not great for kids in middle school. My kids are just starting elementary, and they love it to

I have had great experiences with Scratch, but I agree that it's not great for kids in middle school. My kids are just starting elementary, and they love it to death. For middle-school and up kids I would unreservedly recommend Racket. The curriculum at http://htdp.org http://htdp.org is far and away the best introduction to programming concepts I've ever seen.