1. Scratch: Kids have gone through that - I am looking for something where code is written in a text editor.

2. Pico-8: This is Lua. I wish the editor was not pixelated and I am not sure if the 32K limit is a problem.

3. Python: Python for kids books, pygames: After the initial tiny programs, the next step seems too complicated for me to explain. pygames is a bit behind (was difficult to get it working).

4. Flutter: They start with class, async/await. Code (since it builds a UI) is too nested / hard to read.

What has worked for me somewhat

1. codecombat.com: At least they like this / stick with it (but too much time it spent in understanding/working on game specific API and its quirks).

2. teaching python on my own letting them download sample data files from kaggle.com and asking them to find avg age of a basketball player. Code is simple, fits in two pages, and does something meaningful. Although, I wish there were more there. Right now, I have to think of challenging but reasonable problems from that dataset.

Any feedback on the paid online courses out there? tynker.com ? udemy?

Thanks