Do you have experience with teaching python to kids? I am afraid to try it with my son because white space is important, I tried only Scratch and making him think as "a machine" is hard enough adding syntax errors on top would make the job much harder, let me know if you have experience with this and if you think I am wrong.
But unlike BASIC, Python will grow with you and you can use it for non-trivial projects without fighting with the language. I certainly wish my old Apple II had Python; it would have prevented the immense jump to a "real" programming language, because I kept trying to go from AppleSoft BASIC to C and banging my head into a wall, nothing about it made any sense. (Perhaps I would have had better luck going from BASIC to Pascal or QBasic, but for some reason I never thought to try it. I think because the very few computer-literate adults I knew were minicomputer people and led me to believe that C was the only thing worth learning.)
Not that working up from a text prompt is the only way to learn how to interact with computers, certainly. I know a fair number of people who learned to program due to environments like HyperCard, which are much more visual, and let you start with the art and storytelling and then glue things together with code, rather than start from the code.
But for some people, including myself, the feeling of interacting directly with a computer via a simple prompt, and making it do things each time I pressed the Return key, was quite powerful.
But Python doesn't let you do that - there's no goto...
While I'm being somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I do think it's true that
while true:
print("BUTTS")
Worse, to my mind, is the loss of that small moment of enlightenment regarding complex behavior emerging from computer programs - with 10 PRINT BUTTS : 20 GOTO 10 you are composing two atomic, individually obvious statements to create something more - an infinite loop. When one of the statements is a slightly more complex line that essentially means "do an infinite loop", some of that magic is lost.
In other words, I think a child will more easily learn about indentation, than handle writing flat code, which can get difficult to understand pretty quick
My point is that something that is obvious and simple for us for someone else makes no sense(he is 12 and I don't have experience teaching other children),
For now I gave up on teaching coding to him, maybe he needs to grow a bit more to understand the abstract thinking required.
When you're trying to get your kid into something that doesn't come naturally, they're more liable to give up quickly if they can't make rapid strides.
What happens if you give him a reference sheet? (I have little experience teaching kids but I’m a firm believer in that the only good test is one where all the puzzle pieces are provided; its the composition thats worth testing, knowing the pieces by heart is just to speed things up)
A thing I learned by doing the homeworks with my son is that is also easy to think that the child learned/understood your nice explanations/graphics/examples he does all the exercises/problems correct and then 1 week later he won't be able to do the exercises again, so I will repeat them again after 1 or 2 weeks to make sure he still knows how to do it. This may be different with other children or different teachers
I am not saying that Python syntax is a big issue, but is one more thing to keep in mind and it potentially trip up children(probably something more visual that is impossible to make syntax errors is better but I did not find something that is engaging enough)
If you define a different metric, maybe pretty syntax then it would compare in reverse.
Though I don't have experience or seen people testing this on children and "proving" that having to keep in mind spaces/tabs is harder then the braces and semicolumns (when using a decent IDE) so I may be wrong.
That's pure speculation, not a fact.
1 the cost of keeping indentation in mind for beginners is 0
2 or the cost is greater then zero but there is some different cost in C like syntax that affects beginners
Keep in mind I am talking about syntax here and not the C language