Ok this DWS stuff has gone too far!

This evening I started teaching my daughter how to program. She seemed to understand and was quite amazed at how the computer could do her sums for her.

I need to say that my daughter is only 6!

So I've started writing a simple programming interface for her, using DWS of course as we can't let our little girl be influenced by the laziness of Basic and the uglyness of C

Anyway - the question is - how do I make it easier for her. The concept of String, Integer and Float are meaningless to her. I considered pre-defining a few items in every program - obviously that she couldn't see.

[pascal]
Type Word = String;
Type Number = Integer;
[/pascal]

But as Word is already a predefined type in Delphi/Pascal this could confuse her later.

PrintLn - The stdout command in DWS is also difficult for her:
[pascal]
Procedure Say(Value : Variant);
Begin
PrintLn(Value);
End;
[/pascal]
Would be easy to implement so that it is easier for her. My concern is that it will not help her long term.

My next step is to create a simple DirectX interface that allows the creation of characters and commands to make the characters walk around etc.

What do you think the best way to teach a young girl programming is?