Teaching several students to program, thinking of using Batari basic

[masschamber]

So I have several students that want to learn how to program, right now I'm doing some of the basics of logic and input output with pseudocode, but I want to teach them something with just the right balance of challenge and speed with in which they can obtain results, no matter how small, and something in which they can have results they can find enjoyable, making a game on a console should be tangible enough since I can build them actual cartridges and they can show it off on real hardware,

assembly is too difficult and complex for the group at the moment, and for practical purposes knowing the basics of a high level language would end up being more useful, personally I think the plain language of basic and the results would be more enjoyable to the student compared to c++

anyway, any thing I should know about batari right away? I'll be playing around with it myself for the next few days so I'll be prepared, but any advice from those with experience would be a nice start

[potatohead]

It can be difficult to understand what the contents of variables are.

 

I would build a wrapper program that does a few basic things for them, demonstrating what values do what, and that can display a variable on the score.