Awesome game. Cannot wait I get my hand on a box and play with my 6yo nephew.
Question for OP: the game introduces kids to the imperative paradigm. As somebody who's been exposed to Logo at the age of 6, I can tell I had an awesome time moving the turtle around.
But: do you, Dan, think that one can build an equally compelling game based on the functional paradigm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming , where you have no "side effects" and all you can do is create and compose functions?
Stated otherwise: Turing Machines seems just fine to play with. Any idea on how to make Lambda Calculus just as sexy for kids?
Instructions for playing this game in functional style are included, but you need to order 25 copies of the game.
More seriously: I don't think the game is too biased towards imperative style and would be useful foundation for any future language choice. Yes, it is technically imperative, but those cards don't move the turtle as side-effects. That's their primary effect. A stack of cards behaves much like a function. Similarly to how concatenative languages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concatenative_programming_langu...) are usually viewed as functional rather than as imperative stack manipulation.
In all seriousness, I don't think I'm qualified to teach those concepts to anyone, let alone kids. But there's some awesome discussion on robotturtles.com/community about future directions with both similar and additional rules and pieces. I bet you'd find some folks there who could help!
Question for OP: the game introduces kids to the imperative paradigm. As somebody who's been exposed to Logo at the age of 6, I can tell I had an awesome time moving the turtle around. But: do you, Dan, think that one can build an equally compelling game based on the functional paradigm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming , where you have no "side effects" and all you can do is create and compose functions?
Stated otherwise: Turing Machines seems just fine to play with. Any idea on how to make Lambda Calculus just as sexy for kids?