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Comment by lacker | Hacker News Reader

I have tried this and basically all of the kids-programming methods I can find. It’s hard for something to be a good solution “for kids” nowadays if you can’t run it on an iPad. The interface just ends up being much slower and clunkier so it’s harder to stay engaging. There are a number of iPad-based programming introductions, like Tynker and the various LEGO-based apps, that are the best ones IMO.

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Do kids care about clunky interfaces? Genuine question, I have zero experience dealing with kids. It's just that I remember that when I was myself a kid I would be attracted by any interface (physical or virtual) with a lot of buttons and toggles to play with.

I remember being a kid. Clunky interfaces didn't bother me, but maybe things change, since I was exposed to clunky interfaces first.

Interesting question. Indeed "kids" may enjoy playing with anything, if considered a homogenous group.

This doesn't remove the fact that basic cognitive constraints will still apply although you're targeting a different level of cognition.

With enthusiasm, easy things may be easy to reach despite clunkiness. Reaching more ambitios goals as the hunger grows still depends on basic ux/ergonomics and is greatly enhanced by doing basic usability testing according to well founded protocol.

I feel like clunky is fine, but a lot of these kids programming apps are not just clunky, they're finicky. Weird mouse hit zones, massive slowdowns, glitches, crashes, lost data, etc. Even the "good" ones have most of these issues.

I'm sure it depends on the kid, but my children at least use enough iPad apps that they are quite familiar with the standard gestures and UI controls. For adults it's quite frustrating when an application doesn't use the platform standards - like when a button doesn't look like a button, or if a menu works in some nonstandard way. It isn't interesting, it's just annoying. Kids who are iPad-savvy seem to feel the same way about bad UI as adults who are familiar with their iPhones.

Snap! is just a JS web app, it works just fine on iPads. Snap! is also the closest to "real programming" in my experience because you can make custom blocks and reporters (aka functions), lists are first class so you can nest lists or pass them to blocks or whatever with them, has lambdas, and can call JS so you have full access to the browser APIs and the JS ecosystem.

It works on iPads, but it's a pretty terrible experience. Many of the UI elements are much smaller than the iOS guidelines indicate, and in general nothing is using platform-optimal UI controls.

Can you try my Android game https://corepox.net/ and give me advice on how to improve it. I am very much trying to communicate computational thinking concepts without being too overtly educational, but it's not perform any well and I need help.

(Only watched a video trailer.) More gunz! E.g. homing missiles, proximity mines, etc.

ok, but its a programming game so you can't really grok it unless you play it. But thats important info for the marketing.

I wonder why I had no issues engaging with a DOS prompt and qbasic when I was 8-9 and children today would

Because that's all you had. If you had both modern well-designed iPad educational programming apps, and a DOS prompt, you would choose the iPad apps!

I don't think that is a given at all

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