I'm sure that my kids will certainly love to hear that they have to learn Unix in order to learn a build system in order to try out Python. It's all part of the "learning process for newbies."
> learn Unix in order to learn a build system in order to try out Python
I definitely understand that the installation process for things like python can be confusing to non-programmers, but I think this is a bit disingenuous. You don't have to learn a build system to install it; python was the first programming language I ever learned, and I used it years before I ever even had any idea what a build system is.
Good grief. What's wrong with going to www.python.org/downloads/ and clicking the big button at the top that says "Download the latest version for Mac OS X"?
If you can't even download an installer and run it, then yeah, maybe not quite ready for programming either.
Please forgive my snark, but this would be exactly my thought process as a reasonably competent computer user who wanted to learn Python.
Even on Windows you can open the browser console and do
> console.log("hello")
Just for teaching basic prints, variables, loops and functions, terminal bash on macOS/Linux or Javascript console work just as well as Commodore 64 BASIC.
The problem is not that the environment is not available or setup is too difficult. The problem is that there's now way more competition from other shinies readily available (web, apps, games, videos). Even if you boot your home PC straight into a terminal, as soon as the kids find the way to a web browser it's game over. Even on 1980s home micros, if the kids got access to (pirated) games, practically none would volunterily keep on programming BASIC.
When you were 6 years old is a different time from now. You probably did not have an always-on connection. There was probably no such thing as Web 2.0. Computers were more difficult to use. Google did not exist. The Internet was perhaps still taking off...
