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Why I Believe Scratch Is the Future of Programming

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Re: Why I Believe Scratch Is the Future of Programming

#31

Post by throwanem »

throwaway29911 wrote: post #26
onion2k wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who will code will code even if you don't push them to. The booming industry of coding boot camps shows that there are a large number of people who want to code but didn't have the opportunity or knowledge to learn until they were old enough and wealthy enough to pay for private tuition. I would argue that is strong evidence that your assertion is wrong - it's a reasonable assumption there are a number of peop…

What do you mean by "opportunity"? If they have 3 months to go to a camp, surely they could as well learn at home for those 3 months. It's the certificate and contacts they're after (and pay dearly for).

> What do you mean by "opportunity"?

The opportunity of access to extensive mentorship and a solid curriculum. Those things make a good boot camp a more efficient way to learn than doing it entirely on your own, not least because you don't have to discover all the blind alleys and mistakes for yourself. (Like I did! But I started at age six. An adult looking to learn a trade skill has not the luxury of a whole lifetime to spend doing so.)

Re: Why I Believe Scratch Is the Future of Programming

#32

Post by onion2k »

throwaway29911 wrote: post #26
onion2k wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who will code will code even if you don't push them to. The booming industry of coding boot camps shows that there are a large number of people who want to code but didn't have the opportunity or knowledge to learn until they were old enough and wealthy enough to pay for private tuition. I would argue that is strong evidence that your assertion is wrong - it's a reasonable assumption there are a number of peop…

What do you mean by "opportunity"? If they have 3 months to go to a camp, surely they could as well learn at home for those 3 months. It's the certificate and contacts they're after (and pay dearly for).

What do you mean by "opportunity"?

If you were unfortunate enough to attend a school that didn't have any sort of computing classes, after school groups, etc, or you lived somewhere rural that didn't have those programmes outside of school then you would have had no access to a mentor who can guide you.

If they have 3 months to go to a camp, surely they could as well learn at home for those 3 months.

In order to learn on your own you need some knowledge to start with. If you sit down in front of a computer with zero knowledge of a subject then you don't even know what to put in to Google, and if you start with a search like "how to code" you have no way to assess whether the websites you find are actually useful or a waste of time.

Languages like Scratch can teach someone to code when they have no external input. They might teach "bad" ideas, but those can be unlearned and replaced with better concepts later. Most of us learned by starting with something like BASIC and have gone on to learn better techniques. There's no reason why someone learning today has to start with a "good" language like Python.

Heck, I started with Visual Basic 6. That's was far worse than Scratch as far as teaching bad practices go.

Re: Why I Believe Scratch Is the Future of Programming

#33

Post by tonyedgecombe »

TheBobinator wrote: post #19

We demo'd a software called filebound earlier this year when looking at a document management solution and it left a hell of an impression on me. Most business systems are built off of the concept of the "enterprise infrastructure" being the printing press for the front end infrastructure, and the back office being the back end infrastructure. When the Xerox printer was first introduced, you had a "rapid prototyping"…

In my experience where these products struggle is they are often sold as a solution where the users can create a system without being programmers.

The reality is although they can make life easier they don't take away the need to be able to decompose a requirement into its relevant parts. You still need to think like a programmer to use them well.

Re: Why I Believe Scratch Is the Future of Programming

#34

Post by welly »

tylerhou wrote: post #9
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #2

The future of programming is programming. What's described in the article is indeed true, you can build stuff without syntax, you can extend it, etc. But who is this for? I am not a fan of the "Let's teach everyone to code" rhetoric, because this is same as "let's teach everyone to play the piano", or "Let's teach everyone to be good at math!". People who will code will code even if you don't push them to. And most o…

My friend created a website which solves most of these issues. Instead of using a "made-up" language like how Scratch does, its building blocks are just proxies for CoffeeScript code. You can also freely move between block mode and editing mode, so students who want to learn "real syntax" can do so without having to move to a new platform. CoffeeScript is also potentially helpful for employment because learning JavaS…

How is coffeescript not a "made-up" language? Or C, for that matter?

By "made-up" language, what are you suggesting?

Re: Why I Believe Scratch Is the Future of Programming

#35

Post by f_allwein »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #2

The future of programming is programming. What's described in the article is indeed true, you can build stuff without syntax, you can extend it, etc. But who is this for? I am not a fan of the "Let's teach everyone to code" rhetoric, because this is same as "let's teach everyone to play the piano", or "Let's teach everyone to be good at math!". People who will code will code even if you don't push them to. And most o…

yes, but there are different levels of complexity in software. If you write code for e.g. AI, Google's ranking algorithm, ..., of course you need powerful programming languages to do so. But much everyday software comes down to accessing data rom a database, manipulating it and/ or displaying it. I think if there were simple, scratch-like tools powerful enough to do this in a decent (good enough) way, a lot of non-coders could develop tools for such tasks, freeing expert coders' time to do more interesting stuff.

Re: Why I Believe Scratch Is the Future of Programming

#37

Post by danso »

thinkMOAR wrote: post #17
brakmic wrote: post #13

"Scratch does NOT require syntax" --> this sentence alone disqualifies the whole article.

That plus the word 'believe' in the title. If i simply had to accept what others believe as to be the truth...

Huh? That's kind of an unfair criticism. The word "believe" is more or less an explicit expression from the author that the article is, well, his belief. As a programmer, I like explicit declaration when reading someone else's "code".

The fault is more with you, for automatically associating the phrase "I believe" with implicit brainwashing.

Re: Why I Believe Scratch Is the Future of Programming

#38

Post by ern »

With policiticans buying into the "everyone must code" hype, the gap between what students will be forced to learn in grade school and what they need to become professional programmers is going to be glaringly obvious.

Attempts to introduce today's complex real-world programming paradigms into school will fail, so the obvious next step will be for real-world programming environments to become more like the ones used for teaching. The challenge will be to ensure that these programming tools of the future are well-engineeered so that the code they produce is maintainable.

Re: Why I Believe Scratch Is the Future of Programming

#39

Post by pjc50 »

thinkMOAR wrote: post #17
brakmic wrote: post #13

"Scratch does NOT require syntax" --> this sentence alone disqualifies the whole article.

That plus the word 'believe' in the title. If i simply had to accept what others believe as to be the truth...

You're badly misinterpreting it then; normally when people put forward something as a truth, they do so categorically. Instead they put the "believe" qualifier in. So they're not presenting it as a truth, but saying "I believe this, for the following reasons; you may agree with my reasoning."

Re: Why I Believe Scratch Is the Future of Programming

#40

Post by mcv »

smoyer wrote: post #30
mcv wrote: post #23

I don't quite agree that there's no syntax, it's just that the syntax is more visual. You need to put the round things in the round holes and the square things in the square holes. I remember when I played around with Scratch (only a little, admittedly) there was still a lot that wasn't immediately obvious. There's a lot of digging around through the many blocks to find the one you need, and then puzzling how to use…

I've seen Scratch used in several introductory programming classes and while I don't agree with the author's premise, Scratch just might be the future BASIC.

BASIC is a good comparison. It's a great tool to start with, but as soon as you really want to do something deeper or bigger, you'll want something more like Python at least.
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