Kids Learning to Program Part 3

Filed in archive Basics on October 9, 2005

The new Kids Programming Language (KPL) looks pretty interesting to me. My son, who is ten, sat down with me to take a look at it and he thought it was "awesome." The IDE is freeware and along with the IDE download come a bunch of examples. All of the examples that I've seen provided include some graphics based component. With a few simple lines of code a beginner can make things happen rather simply on their computer screen. There is also a guide where the target audience is "Teachers" and it explains the intent of KPL very well.


What is Kid's Programming Language (KPL)?

• was created for teaching beginners how to program


• is a simplified but modern programming language and development environment


• offers lots of sample educational KPL programs and games


• emphasizes graphics, sprites, sounds and game development


• is designed to help a beginner 'graduate' to Visual Studio or eclipse


• can even generate C# or VB.NET code

The last bullet mentioned is probably the reason why "Microsoft has signed on to promote a new programming language intended to replace BASIC." KPL uses the Microsoft's CodeDOM namespace and programs written in it can be converted to VB.Net or C#. Also, since KPL is based on the .Net framework and can only run on a Windows platform, which makes an obvious why Microsoft chose it. It looks as though Microsoft's intention is not to replace C# or VB.Net with KPL but simple use it as a launch pad for young people who have never programmed before. Once a programmer wants to do more, with their newly found skills, they could easily progress to Microsoft's core development languages or move on to something else like Java ;-).