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Show HN: Goboscript, text-based programming language, compiles to Scratch

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Re: Show HN: Goboscript, text-based programming language, compiles to Scratch

#11

Post by femto »

AlexanderDhoore wrote: post #7

I love teaching Scratch to kids. Some years ago, I used to do "CoderDojo", which is like a hobby club where kids can learn programming. Some kids go to soccer, others to art academy — and these kids learn programming. Super cool to teach. However, most kids get stuck after they master Scratch. Especially kids around the age of 8–10. They learn Scratch. It's awesome. They make some advanced games and really get the ha…

It sounds like you want the ability to instantiate a scratch block that contains a text box, which in turn contains the function body for the block? It would then be possible to incrementally write as little or as much as desired in text.

Getting fancy, that block could use a backend interpreter/compiler of choice, so the language could be Squeak, Python, C, an LLM generator, ...

Re: Show HN: Goboscript, text-based programming language, compiles to Scratch

#13

Post by gibolt »

AlexanderDhoore wrote: post #7

I love teaching Scratch to kids. Some years ago, I used to do "CoderDojo", which is like a hobby club where kids can learn programming. Some kids go to soccer, others to art academy — and these kids learn programming. Super cool to teach. However, most kids get stuck after they master Scratch. Especially kids around the age of 8–10. They learn Scratch. It's awesome. They make some advanced games and really get the ha…

This is how I learned a long time ago with Game Maker. Everything was Gui based, but you could also add code blocks to do more powerful things.

Eventually, most things I built were nothing but code blocks.

Re: Show HN: Goboscript, text-based programming language, compiles to Scratch

#14

Post by byearthithatius »

AlexanderDhoore wrote: post #7

I love teaching Scratch to kids. Some years ago, I used to do "CoderDojo", which is like a hobby club where kids can learn programming. Some kids go to soccer, others to art academy — and these kids learn programming. Super cool to teach. However, most kids get stuck after they master Scratch. Especially kids around the age of 8–10. They learn Scratch. It's awesome. They make some advanced games and really get the ha…

I loved learning and then mentoring at CoderDojos. Incredible meetups where they really let kids learn in their own way with guidance of more experienced coders. Very fun and I never had a bad experience. The ones I went to were at University of Minnesota.

Re: Show HN: Goboscript, text-based programming language, compiles to Scratch

#15

Post by brobdingnagians »

femto wrote: post #11
AlexanderDhoore wrote: post #7

I love teaching Scratch to kids. Some years ago, I used to do "CoderDojo", which is like a hobby club where kids can learn programming. Some kids go to soccer, others to art academy — and these kids learn programming. Super cool to teach. However, most kids get stuck after they master Scratch. Especially kids around the age of 8–10. They learn Scratch. It's awesome. They make some advanced games and really get the ha…

It sounds like you want the ability to instantiate a scratch block that contains a text box, which in turn contains the function body for the block? It would then be possible to incrementally write as little or as much as desired in text. Getting fancy, that block could use a backend interpreter/compiler of choice, so the language could be Squeak, Python, C, an LLM generator, ...

I know this is probably a bit more advanced, but this suggestion reminds me of Blueprints w/ magic nodes in Unreal Engine. There is a plugin for Magic Nodes (https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/magic-nodes/121220) where you can enter C++ into a blueprint node that integrates into the blueprint system. Similar kind of UI could work well

Re: Show HN: Goboscript, text-based programming language, compiles to Scratch

#16

Post by latexr »

AlexanderDhoore wrote: post #7

I love teaching Scratch to kids. Some years ago, I used to do "CoderDojo", which is like a hobby club where kids can learn programming. Some kids go to soccer, others to art academy — and these kids learn programming. Super cool to teach. However, most kids get stuck after they master Scratch. Especially kids around the age of 8–10. They learn Scratch. It's awesome. They make some advanced games and really get the ha…

Maybe something like Hedy will work better for you, instead of Scratch.

https://hedy.org/

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ztdxlkmxpIQ

Re: Show HN: Goboscript, text-based programming language, compiles to Scratch

#17

Post by felixr »

AlexanderDhoore wrote: post #7

I love teaching Scratch to kids. Some years ago, I used to do "CoderDojo", which is like a hobby club where kids can learn programming. Some kids go to soccer, others to art academy — and these kids learn programming. Super cool to teach. However, most kids get stuck after they master Scratch. Especially kids around the age of 8–10. They learn Scratch. It's awesome. They make some advanced games and really get the ha…

For a textual teaching language check out https://hedy.org It is multilingual (not just English) and introduces syntax gradually

Re: Show HN: Goboscript, text-based programming language, compiles to Scratch

#18

Post by paavope »

gibolt wrote: post #13
AlexanderDhoore wrote: post #7

I love teaching Scratch to kids. Some years ago, I used to do "CoderDojo", which is like a hobby club where kids can learn programming. Some kids go to soccer, others to art academy — and these kids learn programming. Super cool to teach. However, most kids get stuck after they master Scratch. Especially kids around the age of 8–10. They learn Scratch. It's awesome. They make some advanced games and really get the ha…

This is how I learned a long time ago with Game Maker. Everything was Gui based, but you could also add code blocks to do more powerful things. Eventually, most things I built were nothing but code blocks.

I had pretty much the exact same experience with Game Maker too. In retrospect, feels like a very powerful pedagogical tool. Even when I wasn't really trying to "learn coding" but rather I just wanted to make some games, I ended up learning to code

The fact that _most_ things could be done with drag-and-drop, but for some features you had to drop down to scripting, served as a really nice and gentle stepping stone to writing code.

Re: Show HN: Goboscript, text-based programming language, compiles to Scratch

#19

Post by tc4v »

AlexanderDhoore wrote: post #7

I love teaching Scratch to kids. Some years ago, I used to do "CoderDojo", which is like a hobby club where kids can learn programming. Some kids go to soccer, others to art academy — and these kids learn programming. Super cool to teach. However, most kids get stuck after they master Scratch. Especially kids around the age of 8–10. They learn Scratch. It's awesome. They make some advanced games and really get the ha…

You use case is exactly what hedy tackles, your experience is really similar to what the author of Hedy tells in conference and interviews.

Re: Show HN: Goboscript, text-based programming language, compiles to Scratch

#20

Post by bvrmn »

web3aj wrote: post #5

This is hilarious because it defeats the purpose of scratch.

Tell me more about scratch's purpose, please. I believe it's to teach programming. GoboScript seems a natural extension of already conventional environment to more "real" textual programming tasks.
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