OwlScript is…

… a programming environment built upon and to resemble JavaScript. Its sole purpose is to serve as training wheels for programming students of all ages. It is designed to be used by the minimally-competent to teach programming to children.

Rationale

Young computer science students do not care to learn how to sort an array. Nor do they have any interest studying class inheritance and counting bits in a byte. What they do want is something to show after hours of typing: a picture. OwlScript focuses on graphics primitives: circles, lines, rectangles, etc. and the programming infrastructure facilitating rendering said primitives.

Who is behind this…

…and what are you scheming? I made OwlScript to help educate the upcoming generation in the computerly arts. Send comments, suggestions, bugs, and cool code to

Advantages

OwlScript's simplified syntax allows the students to concentrate on learning programming, not intricacies of object manipulation.

… is written in JavaScript due to the ubiquity of its interpreter: any modern web browser.

… is self-contained: it can be used directly from any modern browser, no download necessary.

… can be used without an internet connection: download it and start programming!

… is syntactially-forgiving: semicolons at the end of statements are not necessary; often-confusing syntactical constructs, such as for loops, are simplified; some of the more common typos are ignored.