tballmsft

We did studies with children ages 8-14 over the summer. It was quite successful. We'll be reporting on this evaluation once we've completed the analysis. Keep an eye out on https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/microsoft-t...

MakeCode Arcade has an extension to work with the micro:bit edge connector pins from the meowbit.

Yes, it's very close to cellular automata, with a few tweaks to make it easier to program. You are quite right about the debugging situation with growth of rules - I've some plans about this, but it will probably require more screen real estate than the 160x120 MakeCode Arcade screens offer.

Thanks very much for the pointer to PuzzleScript. I was not aware of it. It's very cool to see a rewriting-based system in practice. I chose to work with a more imperative style of guarded commands in TileCode, but it's very close to a rewriting system.

Hi Sean, yes - that is the case. I've regrouped the documentation to make this clear. Happy to have any suggestions for improvements. This is just a starting point.

Yes, MakeCode compiles (in the web browser) to ARM machine code. The MakeCode team is very interested in new handhelds. Any handheld that can run MakeCode Arcade games will also be able to run TileCode, which is built using MakeCode Arcade.

This text is from the page that documents the full programming experience, and was written for programmers. I've moved it out of the overview section.