I first got a chance to see Kodu in action at this year’s SIGCSE conference. It was easily the most exciting thing I saw at the conference (and yes, that includes Alice3 
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Kodu is a project created at Microsoft Research now available via Xbox LIVE for the 360. I had the chance to check it out a bit last night and it is just as sweet to use as the demo led us all to believe.
First of all, you edit the code of a single object and that object reacts to when things happen.
Honestly, there are a lot of things in Kodu that I’ve been thinking about for some time, now. Flipping back and forth between the 3d scene and the code in the overlay. Providing a Games API for Alice3 that emphasizes events. Starting out student with editing a class for a while (as opposed to orchestrating a scene) to see if we can better address the classes/instances problem. Please don’t take “I’ve been thinking along these lines…” as a dismissive “I’ve thought of all this already and just haven’t gotten to it.” Believe me, nothing could be further from the truth. There is a vast chasm between saying “the Games API will emphasize events” and designing and building something as complete and sweet and effective as Kodu. While I don’t think that Alice will ever emulate the program construction of Kudo, it is really encouraging/exciting/inspiring to see what a great job the Kodu team has done. I believe they have built a system that has both a low barrier to entry and a very high ceiling.
In case you can’t tell, I’m really, REALLY impressed with Kodu.
Some quick thoughts:
Many actions loop by default. One can then customize that action to fire only “one time” if desired. Interesting. I couldn’t immediately find a way to do controlled loops (I was surprised that I couldn’t say “do this action 3 times”, for example) but they may have sidestepped the need for explicitly creating separate loop structures. Like so many things in Kodu, I am very interested in seeing how it is received/works out.
Users can create code on separate pages and switch to those pages. I watched Gabe as he quite effectively used pages to reuse a bit of code. Update: these pages are not really like “invoking a subroutine” so much as “switching to a different logic set”.
They provide some really great constructs. Things like “when in doubt wander” came in pretty handy when I was trying to deal with tricky edge cases.
Anyway, enough of me babbling on about how great Kodu is. If you have an Xbox360/XboxLIVE you should definitely check it out. It will set you back a mere $5. I believe a Windows version is in the works. I would be very interested to hear the opinions of people who teach intro to c.s. Who knows, maybe someday we will see a Learning to Program with Kodu curriculum.
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Kodu does cost money as opposed to Alice, Scratch, BlueJ. OK, it’s only 400 Microsoft points but this does mean you have to part with money even if you just want to evaluate it.
Actually, all Xbox Live games allow you to demo them before buying. Some options may be crippled, but it should be enough to give you a sense of what it is capable of doing. With that said, at $5 it’s ridiculously cheap. The biggest barrier to entry right now is that you need an Xbox 360. I believe a PC version is in the works which will eventually make this a moot point.
Hi – My point (poorly made) was that one can’t determine if it’s suitable and other environments are provided free of charge (e.g. no cost to download and discard) – Microsoft only put 6 people on the project, times must be tough for them. I’m particularly intrigued at how easy it is to program without a keyboard.
More of a challenge is getting time on the XBOX – the need to get time on it while kids want to use it for playing games !
There is a video of me demoing Kodu at my blog – http://blogs.msdn.com/alfredth/archive/2009/07/13/kodu-demo-programming-for-little-kids.aspx I was using a Windows laptop to do the demo. Because Kodu was programmed using XNA it can be targeted to either the 360 or Windows. There is a program for educators to try out Kodu on the PC for educational use by applying at https://connect.microsoft.com/Survey/NominationSurvey.aspx?SurveyID=8255&ProgramID=2743&SiteID=714 It uses an Xbox 360 controller on the PC BTW.
FWIW the people on the Kodu team are all senior developers with a lot of video game development experience. And of course using XNA made things a lot easier than they might otherwise might be.
I’m amazed at some complaints (very very few I might add), for the $5.00 asking price. Most of the Xbox Live Arcade games are higher in price, and have zero longevity in comparison. I’ve already put in more hours with Kodu then any other XBLA product since launch. Heck, what about the $60.00 games that you finish within a week? If you purchased Kodu and become very familiar with it (the demo does no justice), you’ll realize just how brilliant this product really is.
I saw Kudo demoed at the pre-Gaming conference in Orlando, FL in April and was impressed! We were also able to “play” with the Windows version. My only concern is the fact that it needs an X-box controller on a PC. Used ones run $20. I don’t think too many schools or afterschool programs will be able to take advantage of it.
We have incorporated Kodu into our curriculum at Unlimited Paenga Tawhiti High School, in Christchurch, New Zealand.
We are using Kodu as our chosen interactive media product, for an NCEA unit standard: Design and assemble an interactive media product without scripting. It’s a Level 3 unit standard (bursary level), worth 3 credits.
One of the requirements is that students must compare Kodu to two other products, and we’re focusing on Alice and Scratch.
We use a private ning network as a feedback site, and we’ll be recording parts of our journey in Kontain Klass, on kontain.com. Kontain Klass is another ICT project here at Unlimited.
A link to our Kontain Klass article on Kodu:
http://www.kontain.com/kontain-klass/entries/36102/kodu—-a-visual-game-creator-by-microsoft/
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