Best language to teach kids programming by creating simple games?

[Dougmeister]

I know Visual Basic, so for simple "Guess the number" type games, that will be fine. But as the kids (ages 9 and 11) progress, they will want more. They already have ideas for games with moving sprites, sound, music, etc.

Someone suggested Python, but I don't know that one, and the only thing I could find was an interactive shell.

Any ideas? Thanks.

 

[Cogman]

Scratch was practically built for this.

http://scratch.mit.edu/

 

[Dougmeister]

I knew there had to be something out there but my Googling just wasn't helping me. Thanks.

 

[DaveSimmons]

See also: http://code.org/

 

[ggadrian]

I really like python, it pretty simple and easy to learn.

 

[Markbnj]

I really like python, it pretty simple and easy to learn.

For text games I agree. It gets a lot more complicated when you want to make stuff move around on the screen. Scratch is probably more likely to hold their interest early on.

 

[Cogman]

For text games I agree. It gets a lot more complicated when you want to make stuff move around on the screen. Scratch is probably more likely to hold their interest early on.

Agreed. Scratch is about as simple as it gets when it comes to putting things on the screen and making them move around. Any other language and you are going to have to learn concepts like file io, texture buffers, window management, event systems, etc. It gets complex really, really fast.

That being said, the complexity is needed if you want to do anything beyond simple animations. In which case, python, go, Java, C#, C++ or just about any language will do (there really isn't much difference in complexity).

 

[Markbnj]

One way to make the jump from Scratch would be Unity. You can do quite a bit in LUA without writing any C++ or shader code. But the workflow and pipeline is still pretty complex.

 

[slugg]

Scratch was practically built for this.

http://scratch.mit.edu/

I was going to come in here and post this. +1