Scratch

Really nice application. Even Harvard University students use it in their first tasks for CS50 lessons.

Home page is now: http://scratch.mit.edu/

http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Scratch_1.4_Release_Notes Scratch now supports prompting for text, and manipulating it. The UI has been tweaked to fit on lower resolution screens. Support for Lego(R) WeDo(TM) hardware was added.

Outstanding multimedia and game development software. I have precious little programming experience, but was able to make a breakout clone in under 3 hours. My 7 year old loves it as well, I showed him the basics, and he was off to the races making his own apps in a matter of hours. The programming model Scratch uses will appeal to any visual learners; fInally, I understand what variables and loops can do.

Scratch looks awesome -- a fun, painless way for kids (MITML says 8 and up, though I bet a sharp 5-year-old could grasp this) to learn about rudimentary programming concepts. Its puzzle-piece subroutine metaphor is intuitive and well thought out, and if we accept the standard formula (power + simplicity = elegance), then I believe the e-word definitely applies! The included code examples illustrate a wide variety of concepts, so kids can feel comfortable diving right in, and a way to share one's programs with the world (the app is also cross-platform) has been built in as well. It's still a work in progress: during testing I had to force-quit a few times. But not to complain -- this is a very worthy idea. (Imagine if it came with a standalone compiler ... yikes!)