"just open a .html file and start playing" is a route to making web pages, not get people into programming.
If they do want to get into programming, Scratch and other learning DEs and/or node/js are much better paths than dealing with the layers of barnacles that have accrued over HTML to get to the OPA / Webasm / TS/JS etc "web programming" environments.
.NET and VSCode are free downloads, provide a managed environment, and C# is a good imperative language to start with. It also supports F# if you want to get into functional programming.
If they do want to get into programming, Scratch and other learning DEs and/or node/js are much better paths than dealing with the layers of barnacles that have accrued over HTML to get to the OPA / Webasm / TS/JS etc "web programming" environments.
.NET and VSCode are free downloads, provide a managed environment, and C# is a good imperative language to start with. It also supports F# if you want to get into functional programming.