Kids Coding

I thought I'd blogged on this before, but it seems not (at least not here!)..

When I were a nipper, I had a book on BASIC for the Acorn (BBC). Actually I had 2 books. Both very similar books, both started with something like:

10 print "hello world"
20 goto 10

But both by page 20 had started relatively advanced data-types and had all the cool programming structures of the day (gosub, etc). Both introduced peeking and poking and had simplified schematics for the 6502 and the Z80. One went off into more complex data-driven programming and the other into creating a simpl robot driven through an RS232 port. These were books for 10yr olds. I have yet to see anything similar today.

Smalltalk is kinda close, but there's something I don't like about it. Too simplified, too direct, too scripty, too much like a toy. The literature I've seen was either too condescending or too adult... in all it's designed for the classroom, not for exploration alone.

So what next? If one was to write a book, what technology? Something real, so Java or .Net based. Something with either a framework (yuck) or set of libraries to make things easier. Something accessible to kids but also something very techie. Games programming? This would be very hard to get the balance right.