What is Waterbear?
Waterbear is a free and open-source web-based code editor designed to teach coding concepts to beginners through a simple drag-and-drop interface. It allows users to write programs by dragging colorful code blocks rather than typing code from scratch.
Some key features of Waterbear include:
- Colorful, puzzle-piece style interface that allows users to snap code blocks together to build programs
- Supports JavaScript and CoffeeScript syntax
- Live preview shows output of code as it's written
- Abstracts away syntax details, allowing beginners to focus on logic and concepts
- Open source and customizable
- Can export code to JavaScript for further editing
By removing the need to worry about memorizing syntax and semantics, Waterbear provides a gentle, forgiving environment for complete beginners to grasp introductory programming concepts like variables, loops, conditionals, and functions. Its graphical interface makes coding accessible and less intimidating.
Scratch, freeCodeCamp, Codecademy, BlueJ, SitePoint, Snap!, Code.org, Coderbyte, Enlight - Learn to Code, Progate, HyperNext Studio, S2JS, Programming Hub, EduBlocks are some alternatives to Waterbear.