The same logic applies to Python. You need to have didactical materials such as Scalable Game Design and train teachers to enable them to teach programming and computational thinking through game design. Using a different, even harder to use tool, certainly will not solve this problem.

You are about as close to understand hard programming problems after an hour of code as you are close to understand hard engineering problems after folding a paper plane.

Looking only at the HARD aspect of programming makes limited sense. Many kids consider programming to be "hard and boring." Notice, this is not a trade off. When you watch kids play certain video games you realize that "hard" alone is NOT a reason NOT to engage in activities. But if there is no clear return on investment then you have a serious problem. Why should I write a program to compute "boring" prime numbers?

It should not be surprising that there is a gigantic leap from the way, say, "programming" is portrayed by popular CS education events such as the Hour of Code and the typical level of "expert programming" reached after 10'000 hours of practice. The 9'999 hours do make a difference. There are well documented strategies and tools to transition from "hard and boring" to "accessible and exciting." As suggested by the article block-based programming (which we pioneered) is one mechanism to mitigate the cognitive challenges suggested by the "hard" part of "hard and boring." However, it is also key to understand the affordances of programming languages to build projects that are of actual interest (affective challenges) to students.

The idea of programming as meta skill for logical thinking or math skills have been thoroughly debunked in research literature a long time ago. Just as learning Latin is not particularly useful for most other learning endeavors, learning to code is, well, great for writing code and not much else. The notion of automatic learning benefits from programming, or similarly, from playing chess, onto logical thinking etc. never materialized and large learning science studies did not reveal compelling evidence.

However, while the above statement may suggest that coding is essentially worthless as school activity one has to be careful no to over interpret the empirical findings of learning scientists. As it turns out, if connected with explicit scaffolding, to other disciplines such as Math, Science, or Music there are measurable benefits. These benefits are just not happening automatically. This is good news for schools who try to establish these ideas by connecting, explicitly, disciplines such as math with computer science (programming/coding/computational thinking/ ...). However, spending a Hour of Code or taking some generic Python/JS/Java... course will, in general K-12 setting, be a waste of time. Having intensionally designed curriculum such as the Scalable Game Design curriculum, where kids learn about math by creating games, in contrast, can have measurable cognitive (e.g. learning math through programming) as well as affective (e.g., actually enjoying the activity of creating a game) benefits.

How is this relevant? In the history of humanity probably more people have died falling off large trees. And ....?

Syntax is just a small initial hurdle. But just as spellchecking does not turn a book you write automagically into a bestseller, tools are needed to support semantics and pragmatic levels of programming. It is time for research to move on beyond fixing the simple problems and searching the proverbial key under the light: Repenning, Alexander. 2017. "Moving Beyond Syntax: Lessons from 20 Years of Blocks Programing in AgentSheets." Journal of Visual Languages and Sentient Systems 3 (July): 68-89.

While there could be potentially interesting math ideas to be explored with Minecraft the ones I heard from Microsoft make no sense to increase interest of kids in math. For instance, the idea to train multiplication tables by making a quiz where you need to fly to the right spot in the table is just super boring. If one uses Minecraft to make math look boring, which is the strategy taken by Microsoft, then one just illustrates that math is intrinsically boring - which it is not.

low pay for teaching is mostly a US phenomenon. There are many countries where teachers, including elementary school teachers, are earning quite well.

... and assemble the chair. That will be a much more interesting AI benchmark.

Everybody is entitled to an opinion but in science, including computer science education, there can be evidence that some things really do work. In the context of the Scalable Game Design project we have explored and evaluated a strategy for teacher professional development. As far as I can tell this is the largest study of its kind:

https://sgd.cs.colorado.edu/wiki/images/4/41/TOCE_2015_Repenning.pdf

Abstract: An educated citizenry that participates in and contributes to Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics innovation in the 21st century will require broad literacy and skills in computer science. School systems will need to give increased attention to opportunities for students to engage in computational thinking and ways to promote a deeper understanding of how technologies and software are used as design tools. However, K-12 students in the United States are facing a pipeline for computer science education that is broken. In response to this problem we have developed the Scalable Game Design curriculum based on a strategy to integrate computer science education into the regular school curriculum. This strategy includes opportunities for students to design and program games and Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics simulations. An approach called Computational Thinking Pattern Analysis has been developed to measure and correlate computational thinking skills relevant to game design and simulations. Results from a study with over 10,000 students demonstrate rapid adoption of this curriculum by teachers from multiple disciplines, high student motivation, high levels of participation by women and interest regardless of demographic background.

If you read a recent report by Google exploring why women are not interested in participating in computing you see that the top two adjectives describing their perception are "hard" and "boring." However, there is good news: with the right kind of tools (Computational Thinking Tools instead of cumbersome coding tools) and the right kind of domain orientation one can transform “Hard and Boring” into “Accessible and Exciting" https://sgd.cs.colorado.edu/wi...

yes, what could possibly be more exciting than turning on and off an LED.

NSF is a US government foundation supporting science through grants. They are NOT developing anything nor are they patenting anything. NSF is funding organizations, mostly universities, but has a clear disclaimer statement: "Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation."

The original article does not make any such claims and indeed states "a research project funded by the National Science Foundation" - the poster, EditorDavid, should have been a bit more careful.

Congratulations to owning a - probably one inch thick - laptop computer that is so old that it can directly connect to an antique East European video projector.

Oh what crazy irony. Jason obviously does not understand what coding even is. His example:

My kids can come in here and decide to make a device where if my son squeezes his teddy he will send me a tweet to say, ‘I love you.’ Or if you walk through a laser tripwire it will set off an alarm. It interacts with actual hardware, actual code and all it requires is a squeeze, a drag-and-drop and a little imagination.”

This is - guess what - CODING. When you do this: IF press(teddy) THEN say('I love you') using drag and drop it is called coding! I should know with AgentSheets we started drag and drop programming 20 years ago. Happy programming.