New programming course

[Mrocza]

I'm not certain wether I'm actually allowed to make a scratch on your awesome script there but I seem to be that one guy who tends to notice problems everywhere.

The thing is that new elements are not introduced in a neutral environment. There is a fairly large set of things to keep track of.
For instance... Loops are introduced in a moment when the player has to simultaneously keep track of the relations between multiple game elements - cube, ore, converter, grabber and moreover lack of relations - cubes are not bound to platforms. On top of that the first loop introduced is a conditional loop (while). That's a steap learning curve there, a snowball rolling off the hill. A giant snowball tends to get out of controll pretty easily.

What is needed? A learning curve that is as smooth as possible. I'm no level designer but I might say that I played though a few levels in a few games. The other thing is that as some of you know I've been gone a few years. During that time I got tangled in a little pedagogical course and even ended up spending some time as a middleschool teacher.

I'll try to refer to said learning smoothness through a few examples.
Have you ever played Portal? A small title by Valve. They made an excelent job at teaching people solve complex logical issues and even made that fun. Each and every time a new mechanic is being introduced the player is placed within a sterile environment with one task in mind. Specifically... There is a level in Portal dedicated to a sole concept of stepping on a button and shooting a portal through an open door. This is to ensure that the player knows that a button can be pressed not only with a cube but also by the player themself. This is necesary even tho the player saw a door opening with the button stepped on in the earlier level. A thing that is obvious to us is never obvious to everyone.

You're looking for a nice programming course that covers the very basics. I've seen at least two of those.
The first one was the course in CeeBot Teen. It covered the basics - moving, turning, loops, functions with the use of nothing but a bot with a bunch of crayons stuck to it. Loops and functions explained with only one object to keep track of... the bot. Surprisingly it leads to the second course I had in mind.
Turtle academy (pol. Logomocja) is basically the same thing as CeeBot Teen - drawing lineart on a screen. There was a bunch of people working on Logo (programming language) and they did a really good job. That's probably why Logo is now - 48 years after it's creation - still a thing used in school (at least in Poland). I mean I've been programming in Turtle academy and so are children now. The master goal should be to suck the very esence of CeeBot Teen and Turtle academy and pump it into something that will no longer be associated with a child's toy.

Simplicity gentelmen... simplicity...