What is the crowd's opinion of
Grasshopper?
From 3.5 billion comments
8 reviews of this app found across the web:
I wondered, too. From Grasshopper's About page:
>Grasshopper was created by a team of passionate coders from Google’s workshop for experimental products, Area 120.
Surprised no-one has mentioned The Grasshopper app just launched by Google: https://grasshopper.codes/
For the total beginner it’s really good at covering the basics of coding through JavaScript examples. Mobile too.
Hey OP. Hijacking your comment in hopes you see this.
I did a quick search on this thread and saw no one recommended this app. Check out Grasshopper. It's a Python tutorial game built by Google engineers. It's really easy to use and I found it engaging. Probably way better than YouTube tutorials. And it's free! My background is in Mechanical Engineering, so my coding knowledge is minimal, but I wanted to see what Python was about, and this was a fantastic resource.
If you are a beginner to coding in general, you could try some free classes online, particularly ones with built in editors that will help you find those small syntax issues that can cause so much trouble.
As an example, Google makes one that I think is free. I think it teaches Javascript, but it's a good place to start, and a lot of coding practices you learn will apply to any coding language: https://grasshopper.codes/
I would suggest using https://scratch.mit.edu/ or https://grasshopper.codes/ to introduce programming to a child. "Picking a language" shouldn't be your goal, because real programming is never limited to one language. Though Minecraft's main language is Java, Java is not it's sole language.
Understanding the underlying concepts of programming is what should be your goal for your child, because s/he will be able to apply those principle to any language.
Starting with the above links will allow a child to understand computational thinking; what a computer needs to be told and why. From there, they can analyze a problem, decide a solution, and then, for example, think "I need to assign an integer to a variable in X language" and just look that up.
Watch youtube tutorials. It won't be as effective if you can't practice it though.
Here's an app to learn Javascript: https://grasshopper.codes/ . Perhaps you can find something similar for HTML/CSS.
There's Grasshopper from Google. I haven't done much more than scratch the surface on it so I can't speak to its quality or ease of use, but it's free.
Feel free to DM me. I run Grasshopper: https://Grasshopper.codes we are always interested in how people learn from the app, and could be interesting to run some user studies together if that’s your kind of thing.