Patrice Gans, a technology teacher and library-media specialist in Connecticut, reviews Super Scratch Programming Adventure (No Starch Press, 2012).

I started learning programming in eighth grade. It was on my school's first Apple II and the program that most sticks in my head was a short BASIC routine that had a small square bouncing around ...

Do we need a new beginning programming language? My answer is “yes”, and the more programming languages and tools we have to introduce programming to kids, adults and everyone else, the better.

At a time when parents are eager to give their kids an edge in math and science, several computer programming languages have been developed specifically for children.