Bayle Shanks's website: proj-plbook-plChLearningLangs

Table of Contents for Programming Languages: a survey

Easy-to-learn languages and platforms

BASIC

Because of its popularity and historical impact, BASIC has its own chapter [[plChBASICLang?]]

Platforms

Lists of toy processors/VMs (and things which tend to have them, such as fantasy consoles)

https://lobste.rs/s/lp4jgz/i_am_trying_collect_list_toy_processors
Fantasy consoles/computers
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24407370 mentions also Pq93, Pixelvision 8, Liko-12, PX8 but says they are all similar
"Some fantasy consoles and computers that stood out to me in my brief research into them so far are the PICO-8, the TIC-80, the PQ93, the SCRIPT-8, the LIKO-12 and Pixel Vision 8 (PV8). Many of these use popular languages like C# and JavaScript?."
https://itch.io/c/195696/fantasy-consoles
https://uxdesign.cc/fantasy-systems-promoting-creativity-through-constraint-184381be06fc

PICO-8 (Lua)

http://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

" My kids have a great time with PICO8:

http://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

The fact that everything you need to build a game is built-in is very key to their enjoyment - they don't need to deal with any operating system in this environment, and have (almost) everything they need to be self-contained developers. (Built-in docs would be nice..)

Its interesting, having watched the evolution of PICO8, to see the mass explosion in creativity around the scene, and I have observed a key to its success - by putting constraints on what you can do and how you can do it, while also filling in the inner space of those constraints with excellent tooling, you give people freedom - within a limit - to create amazing things that push those limits.

You can read more about PICO8 (if you're interested) in this wonderful 'zine, which reflects the culture of the scene very well:

http://pico8fanzine.bigcartel.com " [1]

Links:

Variants and implementations:

PicoLove?
PX8
JSGS

See also CHIP-8 which ran on the RCA 1802. See also the CHIP-8 section in plChMiscIntermedLangs2.txt.

LOAD81 (Lua)

https://github.com/antirez/load81

"Load81 is an attempt at creating a Codea-inspired environment to teach children how to write Lua programs. It features a graphical programming environment and a Commodore-64 style integrated editor so that the programmer is confined into a friendly environment with a simple editor"

"This, I think, is better than QBasic, in that it has all the same functionality in the IDE, but teaches them a better language: Lua. Plus you can install it almost everywhere you can't install QBasic.

Anyway, in case any other HN'er out there is interested in doing stuff like this with their kids, give PICO8 and LOAD81 a try .. they're both, in my opinion, great ways to get young minds programming .. " [2]