Hedy: An Inclusive, Multi-Lingual, and Gradual Programming Language (Invited Talk)

Software is playing an increasing role in everyone’s lives, and therefore it is important (and fun!) for kids to become creators in the digital world. However, existing programming languages are not necessarily designed for learnability, with cryptic error messages and a lack of easily accessible resources. In this talk, Felienne will outline what issues existing tools have, and how these issues disproportionally affect underrepresented minorities in programming including girls, kids with disabilities and non-English learners. She will then outline her story of inventing and creating Hedy, an inclusive, multi-lingual and gradual programming language for learners. Hedy is open source, runs in the browser, is free to use, and is available in 54 different languages (Including English, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and Hindi). Hedy was launched in early 2020 and now serves about 500,000 monthly users.