Teaching programming with robots in school: are all Environments equally effective?

Novice programmers, have diffucalties in understanding fundamental programming concepts and methods. In order to overcome these difficulties, several nethods have been proposed, such as programming mechanical constructions (educational robotics). In this paper we present a comparison between two programming environments for the LEGO robots, used in the teaching of programming to young pupils. Our results seem to suggest that probably, a text-based interface, such as BrickxCC, could be at least equally effective, if not more effective, as totally graphical interfaces, often used to introductory programming courses.