> School courses will do nothing if people don't have
  > access to programmable computers

I was taught to program exactly in this way: in the classroom, without access to computers—our school did not have any.

When I finally had access to a computer and a real programming language (not some pseudo code) I just needed the syntax to write my programs in.

The tricky part is not to teach kids the syntax of language X, it's to teach them to operate abstract structures, and that is much much harder.

But most have access to Excel. VBA has it warts but the step from Excel is small and creating something valuable is actually possible for beginners.

VBA ... gosh ... Why don't you just use a Web browser and Javascript.

I hate VBA as much as the next person here, quite certainly even more. However, comparing VBA and Javascript:

- To be really productive Javascript requires knowledge of HTML/CSS

- Both have their quircks

- For the things people do in their day jobs Excel/VBA is a better match

- You can do some mathematical stuff easier, it has matrix multiplication and a generally usable solver

Windows ships with windows scripting I believe; which gives you access to VBScript and something like a javascript out of the box. They have a free editor too but I don't know if it installs by default; anyway you can just use notepad if you want a lowest common denominator programming environment for kids on pretty much any windows box since 98.

VBScript is rather obscure and AFAIK useful mostly for automation of admin tasks.

It doesn't help you with everyday stuff. It doesn't exist in Windows GUI, unlike (most) other Windows software. You don't use it to build GUI apps, games, web services or whatever may be considered "interesting" nowadays.

Contrast this with DOS which shipped with BASIC interpreter and demo games.

> School courses will do nothing if people don't have access to programmable computers. And they don't have [...]

Well, that's almost solved with the Raspberry Pi: a fully programmable computer for just $40. It used to be a lot more expensive to give a child access to a computer that (s)he could program and tinker with...

Hm... What would be easier to convince schools to do:

A.) download this software package (say, Python) that allows kids to learn how to program. B.) buy a dozen $40 mini-computers kids can use to learn how to program.

Most schools I know of would pick option A.

I don't see how this is an issue.

Day 1: Learn how to setup the language on your computer.

A lot of books, like Learn Python the Hard Way, make this the first step.

I think I slightly misstated my point. The problem isn't really about lack of programming tools, but lack of programming as a concept.

You are given a black box which does some stuff, but you have no idea how it does this stuff or how to make it do something else. You don't even know that it would be relatively easy with a decent IDE.