Programming Language for Children

Programming language is just like a natural human language but the language used is either strongly different, slightly different or totally different. It goes the same as our culture. We have multi culture in the world and we speak differently. So, programming language is also favors in certain aspects - the metaphors used, the GUI, the images, the semantic language and most important of all is the ways of thinking.

Programming language for children is another story to talk about. It has been discussed over 30-20 years ago and yet it still remain as the favourite topic for those who are interested in children and computer field, including me.

BASIC has established as the obvious programming language introduce to children in American on how to program a computer. It contains only few of small vocabulary (just 50 word) and was found quite easy to learn (refer here to know more on the advantages of BASIC). One issue occurs in BASIC was how to use it. People who developed BASIC were working generally as engineers and they were the one that made the decision which and what languages best fits the computer during that particular time. Most educators rejects the idea of using BASIC in classroom because the language represents as 'too mathematical'. Nevertheless, the language has become the root of many existing end-user programming languages.