I think Elm might well be a good introductory environment for a motivated beginner. It's Javascript/HTML/CSS in the background but you only work with the Elm language. Best of all, you can work with it within a browser (see [1]). So no arduous set-up.
It's a functional language, but I'm not convinced that an object-oriented language is good for an introductory language, anyway.
I plan to start my 7-year-old daughter on Elm in the next few months. She's already playing around with various introductory programming activities on Sugar OS (Turtle, etc.).
I'll report back on how it goes.
But I agree that a revived HyperCard would also be a great environment. My family was all PC growing up in the 80s, so I had no exposure to HyperCard at that time. But reading about it retrospectively, I'm impressed.
Excel, the most successful programming environment for non-programmers, is functional in nature, so I don't doubt that functional is the way to go. Elm's syntax leaves me a bit more skeptical, though.
Positional arguments are a big nono for me. When I read the code, there's too much overhead to knowing what things do. One of the nice things about HyperTalk is that it's a bit self describing.
One of these three is entirely non-obvious
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It's a functional language, but I'm not convinced that an object-oriented language is good for an introductory language, anyway.
I plan to start my 7-year-old daughter on Elm in the next few months. She's already playing around with various introductory programming activities on Sugar OS (Turtle, etc.).
I'll report back on how it goes.
But I agree that a revived HyperCard would also be a great environment. My family was all PC growing up in the 80s, so I had no exposure to HyperCard at that time. But reading about it retrospectively, I'm impressed.
1. http://elm-lang.org/Examples.elm