Helpful learning tool

I think it is a really cute and informative way to introduce students to different coding languages and coding in a very simple and easy to learn manner. Whether they want to code art, music, or a simple creative game, Pencil Code allows them to do so. In my experience I was able to code a simple line of music with multiple instruments with little knowledge of coding!

There are many things I like about this resource. First, how you can play and pause to see how your code functions. I think the interactive-ness of this resource is great since you can edit the pencil code, press play and get visual feedback on whether you coded correctly or not. With this, it is very easy to see where you might have gone wrong in the code which can help students understand basic coding logic at the start. I didn't like the User Interface between all the different functions. I totally understand there are a lot of functions and dividing the functions into 8 blocks which dropdown for more is likely the best approach, however, I believe this could be very overwhelming for beginner students. This would be especially overwhelming if students have no coding background as some of these tools are very large and have lots of text. An example of this is in the Snippets section, the "forever #, -> fd #, if not inside [window], stop() +" function would be extremely confusing for people knew to coding.

Pencil Code is a beginner-friendly coding platform that allows students to explore code and art. It offers flexibility for students to start with block-based coding and transition to text-based coding. However, it lacks the structure and scaffolding found in competitor platforms, which may require additional effort from teachers. Debugging can be challenging, and the small user community limits opportunities for collaboration and learning from others.