Pencil Code (programming language)

Pencil Code is an educational programming language and website. It allows programming using Scratch-style block coding or CoffeeScript. Code runs directly in the web browser and can be shared with others. The language centers on a model of a pencil programmatically drawing on a 2-dimensional screen, with the pencil cursor visually depicted as a turtle.

A 2019 study by Deng et al. in an eight-week teaching intervention comparing text-based and block-based environments found that students learning in a mixed environment had improved confidence and computational thinking.

History
Pencil Code was created by David Bau and his son in 2013. It was inspired by Logo, the 1967 programming language for drawing on a screen using a Lisp-like programming language. Google has funded improvements to Pencil Code via Google Summer of Code projects.