These days, you are more likely to sneak kids into programming via Scratch — a system for setting up programs via blocks in a GUI. Again, you can get simple results simply.

Computer programming is not usually taught to 8-year-olds. But a new system developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology turns building video games into child’s play. The system is ...

Scratch saves its finished files in its own .SB format, but users can upload their finished products to the Scratch home page with the click of a button, a very Web 2.0 addition.

Scratch is a “sprite” based system. In this case sprites are objects that have as attributes one or more visual images called “costumes”, one or more sound samples, and one or more scripts.