[Full disclosure: I have contributed to Hackety Hack! (<a href="http://hackety-hack.com/" rel="nofollow">http://hackety-hack.com/</a>) in the past, an analogous product.]<p>I wish Kidsruby didn't feel like a really poorly directed effort. That website is about as unfriendly as it could be. For example:<p>I'm a new programmer - where do I get started? Does the app teach me? Does the website teach me? Can anyone help me if I have questions? How do I "make games" or "hack my homework"?<p>I'd bet kids don't care about the news, the Twitter feed, or how many Likes this has on Facebook, so why is that the first thing they see? (And why is it included on most pages? Is there no more useful information to add?) How do I even get to the "about" page besides a poorly named link on the homepage?<p>--<p>These are probably issues that can be solved by a designer and some careful thought, but I think it takes more than a cartoon header to be "kid friendly". Obviously the website isn't the core product, but with so few examples and lessons, I feel like it needs to offer more direction, guidance and instruction. Not everyone learns best in a sandbox.
Unfortunately, I couldn't even get the darn thing to run. I am fairly familiar with Ruby, but the entire process from figuring out what to download and then trying to get it to install, and then trying to launch it was just too rough. Had to uninstall it. I'll try again in the future if it fixes some issues. Nice idea though.
Is Ruby really better than Python for kids? I find Python to be more consistent and less surprising than Ruby, although that sometimes comes at the expense of expressiveness.<p>For that matter, has anyone researched the (dis)advantages of teaching statically typed languages?