Great thoughts! I completely agree that learning to code is a lot about trial and error. One of key things that we decided to do with Grasshopper is make it possible for people to write real code, but on their phones. From the very beginning, it's possible for users to "go off the rails" and write code, run it, and see what happens. We didn't want to do fill-in-the-blank stuff, since there's only one right answer. We constrain the code editing environment to be relevant to the puzzle at hand, but that's mostly so we don't overwhelm beginners.

We also have a Playground (available in the left-hand menu) where users can just play around using the Grasshopper coding environment.

Would love to keep getting your feedback on how we can make everything more real and keep that magic. :)