[school-discuss] Good programming language to teach an 8yr old

[Bill Barowy <wbarowy@attbi.com>]

On Friday 19 March 2004 1:38 pm, Bill Kendrick wrote:

> What's a good, kid-friendly language for today's kids to use (on Linux,
> of course!)?

I believe there is a version of logo out there for linux.
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue43/silva.logo.html

And while java is on the AP exam last I heard, Perl is available everywhere
(but what would an 8 yr old want to do with it?).

Anyway, logo has some nifty features that easily bridge to object-oriented
programming and one can do cool stuff with recursion.

I've taught microworlds logo (mac/PC) to k-12 teachers so i've seen a wide
range of things.

Also check out star-logo or net-logo, which can have thousands of tutles 
-- a
distributed paradigm.
http://education.mit.edu/starlogo/

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bb