Oh that’s a shame. I think you’re right about teaching the basics in Elm, but I’m not so sure which things should be left out at an early age. Bootstrap: Algebra teaches basic types but I don’t think it teaches Typed programming in the way Elm expects. Type signatures take a lot of explaining, so perhaps leaving that out is better for kids.
I have her The Programmers Brain book knocking around somewhere, but haven’t read it yet. Hedy seems an interesting (and ambitious) project, although I’m not sure it’s a good idea to cater for every single language! Elm’s compiler seems better for discovering the language through error (at least as levels increase)
Hedy has a rudimentary stepper, which is a nice touch. That’s something Elm should have. I guess Hedy is still a work-in-progress. Have you had time to play around with it at all?
Are you using the Playground package? There doesn’t seem to be much documentation for that. What specifically are they struggling with for text-editing?
Racket has a very nice images teach pack, which can be used with what they call Universe to build little games with a Model View Controller, not too dissimilar to Elm architecture.
There’s really a lot of thought and time gone into Racket’s teachpacks, but besides simple pictures I think it suits ages 16 and above. It’s still quite academic. Bootstrap: Algebra and it’s other courses (see above) would be better for younger kids.
The other problem I’ve found with HTDP’s method is that for younger minds, it seems like a lot of code for not much fun. I previewed a simple UFO landing for 15 year olds. They weren’t super impressed. Impressed about the code, but not about the output, when you’ve got so much visual stimulation these days!
Career starters
So there’s some ideas for kids there, but how to you onboard staff? Junior programmers? How do you feel about these coding Bootcamps for adults and how well do you think they prepare you for real projects?
Some might know how to code, some have no experience.