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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

#41

Post by ModernMech »

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.

Same, except for me it was Corel Click & Create.

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

#42

Post by femto »

liotier wrote: post #23
femto wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, ...

> 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 ? That is the escape hatch from all visual development environments. Having seen Talend and W4 in action, I know the end state of the process: a single block with everything in it - I'm barely caricaturing here. Maybe the specific needs of early learners will keep the s…

As I see it, that the whole point in this case. Alexander wants to teach children how to program in text mode, but can't see the bridge from Scratch to text mode. With textboxes, the child can write small functions to start with. As they learn, they may well start making the blocks of code more complex. Eventually they might end up with a single block with everything in it, as you describe. At that point they ditch the Scratch "wrapper" and start using a typical text mode tool chain. Mission accomplished.

One of my children did something like this. In the days when Scratch was written in Squeak, he discovered that shift-clicking the 'r' in the Scratch logo dropped him into the underlying Squeak environment. He then started modifying and writing Scratch blocks and was eventually comfortable with text mode programming.

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

#44

Post by lolinder »

latexr wrote: post #16
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

Yeah, I first thought of Hedy too. It doesn't keep them within the ecosystem but it does address the gradual intro problem and the localization problem.

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

#45

Post by JamesSwift »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #43

Why is text preferable to scratch? What is fundamentally wrong with scratch to make this transition desirable?

(Not OP) Scratch is great. Its an excellent first step. But you hit the limits fairly quickly for what is easy to do "reasonably". So you stay within the limits of what it does well and that limits the kinds of things you can do. And then you risk losing the kids interest to keep at it, if they become bored with the medium.

I think Roblox is not a bad next step (tons of out of the box marketplace options), or Ive also been doing a bit of Godot with my kids but with me driving a lot of it while we explore it together.

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

#46

Post by tantalor »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #43

Why is text preferable to scratch? What is fundamentally wrong with scratch to make this transition desirable?

goboscript allows you to create advanced Scratch projects with ease, you can use any text editor, use a version control system such as git. You can refactor your code using search and replace. Text code can be copy pasted, which allows you to easily reuse code or share it with others. goboscript syntax is concise and easy to read.

goboscript allows you to integrate external tooling and workflows, such as using a script to generate costumes for a text rendering engine. Or loading in images into lists.

goboscript has a powerful macro system - similar to Rust's macro system. This allows you to write macros to generate code.

goboscript is more than just an 1:1 mapping of Scratch blocks to text, it also has additional features like local variables for procedures (custom blocks).

goboscript also performs optimizations, detects problems and unused code.

All of these new features are impossible in the visual programming paradigm.

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

#47

Post by aspizu »

tantalor wrote: post #46
ninetyninenine wrote: post #43

Why is text preferable to scratch? What is fundamentally wrong with scratch to make this transition desirable?

goboscript allows you to create advanced Scratch projects with ease, you can use any text editor, use a version control system such as git. You can refactor your code using search and replace. Text code can be copy pasted, which allows you to easily reuse code or share it with others. goboscript syntax is concise and easy to read. goboscript allows you to integrate external tooling and workflows, such as using a scri…

> All of these new features are impossible in the visual programming paradigm.

I believe that to be not true. Visual paradigm allows for some interesting behaviours.

1. Integrate external tooling and workflows

This is just the result of the Scratch runtime being in the browser.

2. Macros

Okay, macros might seem very difficult in a visual paradigm, but its possible. And, in a visual paradigm, it would be very easy to visualize how macros transform the code. (You could have a pop-up that shows the expanded form of the macro)

3. Optimizations: Turbowarp is a Scratch mod that does JIT compilation with optimizations.

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

#48

Post by ninetyninenine »

tantalor wrote: post #46
ninetyninenine wrote: post #43

Why is text preferable to scratch? What is fundamentally wrong with scratch to make this transition desirable?

goboscript allows you to create advanced Scratch projects with ease, you can use any text editor, use a version control system such as git. You can refactor your code using search and replace. Text code can be copy pasted, which allows you to easily reuse code or share it with others. goboscript syntax is concise and easy to read. goboscript allows you to integrate external tooling and workflows, such as using a scri…

> All of these new features are impossible in the visual programming paradigm.

This is false. The logic is simple to see why. Text is limited to alpha numeric characters restricted in a format that’s from left to right lines. It’s a very arbitrarily specific way to represent a “program”

In fact text is in itself a visual program. It’s one set of arbitrary rules as outlined above on how to represent a concept visually.

Thus there are definitely ways to represent a program with different rules with more dimensions and much less restrictions.

I don’t know how people get in there heads that in visual programming things are “impossible.” Like it’s not even a subjective thing, it’s definitively wrong.

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

#49

Post by ninetyninenine »

JamesSwift wrote: post #45
ninetyninenine wrote: post #43

Why is text preferable to scratch? What is fundamentally wrong with scratch to make this transition desirable?

(Not OP) Scratch is great. Its an excellent first step. But you hit the limits fairly quickly for what is easy to do "reasonably". So you stay within the limits of what it does well and that limits the kinds of things you can do. And then you risk losing the kids interest to keep at it, if they become bored with the medium. I think Roblox is not a bad next step (tons of out of the box marketplace options), or Ive als…

Why not extend the language itself to have the features we want? Why turn it into text?

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

#50

Post by zozbot234 »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #43

Why is text preferable to scratch? What is fundamentally wrong with scratch to make this transition desirable?

Text is great for Git-based collaborative workflows. There's a reason why text-based programming languages are the standard today, and walled gardens like Smalltalk "images" and the old LISP machine environments have fallen out of use. Scratch is yet another walled garden.
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