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wccrawford
Nice, but there's still quite a stigma attached to 'nerd'. Many kids will avoid the site just because of that.
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muyuu
That's lesson number 0.
citizen428
Yes, but I already owned that domain and since it's a just for fun side project, I didn't really feel like spending money on a new one.
technomancy
I suspect the site itself is targeted towards parents.
nbashaw
Great site, but the image of the kid on the left should have a negative z-index so it doesn't get in the way of the sidebar navigation.
citizen428
Yes, I had noticed that before and fixed it before I read this thread. Thanks for pointing it out though!
Pynkrabbit
is it just me or are the links on the left deactivated?
Palomides
the image seems to be covering some of the links
danso
How so? They seem to be clickable
arxymond
it looks nice for me ... may be because my monitor is big ?
Pynkrabbit
ahh, they are working again, maybe it was just me :)
nbashaw
See my comment above - the image is using fixed-positioning and has a default z-index above that of the links. They can fix it by setting the image's z-index to -1.

Edit: looks like they fixed it.

arxymond
Nice idea and nice website... thanks... actually i didn't know staff like that exists for kids ... thanks !
rapind
I appreciate you putting this together and was about to send the link around when I ran into Application errors throughout. Looks like your server kicked it.
citizen428
Yes, I see lots of 503s in my Heroku logs :-( This is a pet project, so I don't wanna pay for it, which means you all probably have to live with this until the initial wave of traffic dies down again, sorry!
citizen428
And it's back. Turns out the problem wasn't really the traffic but a problem with the MongoDB setup...
citizen428
I'm the guy who runs HappyNerds.net, thanks for all the attention, but it looks like my free little Heroku account can't handle it :-/
danso
Oops sorry. I saw you had promo'ed your site in the comments of an earlier article about kids and programming that HN linked to. So, I just wanted to spread the word :)
citizen428
Nothing to be sorry about, thanks for spreading it! Site's back up now :-)
aroberge
You might want to add rur-ple (http://code.google.com/p/rur-ple); it is similar to Guido van Robot (and was inspired by it). However, 1) it uses Python (instead of a more limited, Python-like inspired language); 2) it has more lessons and exercises than Guido van Robot; 3) it provides an embedded programming environment to go beyond the robot's world.

A second addition to consider is GvR online (http://gvr-online.appspot.com/ui/index.html), an online version of Guido van Robot.

breadbox
So -- has anyone here actually used any of these languages? Or better yet, given them to an actual child? Any feedback?
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[dead] aroberge
I know that the developers of Guido van Robot were getting positive feedback from users. And I got emails from parents and teachers using rur-ple. One high school teacher has actually used it every year since I first wrote it in 2004.