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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

#41

Post by onion2k »

mrob wrote: post #24
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…

I suspect the majority of those coding boot camp customers do not want to code, but want money, and see coding as an easy way to get it.

You have no evidence for that, and it's a pretty horrible thing to say about the people who take those courses.

Re: Why I Believe Scratch Is the Future of Programming

#42

Post by pedrow »

My daughter (9 years old) loves Scratch. For her I think the benefit is that she can do the part of programming that involves analysing a problem and extracting the logical steps that a computer could process, without all the fiddly matching up of brackets etc.

The original Scratch was written in Smalltalk and it was possible (once you were ready!) to access the underlying Objects and do 'real programming' The current Scratch2 is Flash (I think) and that's no longer possible. I think that's a shame.

Re: Why I Believe Scratch Is the Future of Programming

#43

Post by danso »

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…

> And most others, well they have other better things to do in their lives like making art, becoming a scientist, or becoming a doctor.

Agree with your general sentiment, but this kind of made me smile. I'm teaching a general programming class next quarter and I plan to say the opposite of this, that the students don't have anything better to do in their lives than to learn programming -- at least for the 10 weeks that they've signed up for.

I actually do believe that, but only in the way that I feel it would be shortsighted to tell an aspiring doctor, "don't mind the literacy thing, just be a good doctor!"

Re: Why I Believe Scratch Is the Future of Programming

#44

Post by blauditore »

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…

> The "education" purpose is also out of touch too. If I wanted to teach my kid how to program I would teach him python. It's not that hard.

It's not just about learning to program. Building systems with these blocks trains problem solving and abstract thinking skills, which are also helpful in many areas outside of software development or mathematics. That's part of the reason why schools and universities have students lern mathematics even if they're not going to use those exact mechanics later in their profession.

And such a gamification helps catching their interest where raw code might just scare them away.

Re: Why I Believe Scratch Is the Future of Programming

#45

Post by kwhitefoot »

welly wrote: post #34
tylerhou wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think he means 'made up for the occasion', 'made up just for this project'.

Using a main stream language would make re-use and integration easier as well as making it easier for users to move both from Scratch to more conventional methods and from them to Scratch.

Re: Why I Believe Scratch Is the Future of Programming

#46

Post by StavrosK »

onion2k wrote: post #32
throwaway29911 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lear…

> 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.

I grew up in a small Greek village at a time when very few people knew what a computer was. My first exposure to programming was finding a CD with all sorts of things in it, including Visual Basic 4. I had no internet, so literally the only thing I had to go on was the VB language reference (the reference, as in, this function does that), and a two-page tutorial on making a temperature converter.

I taught myself programming using just that reference and tutorial, and nothing else. I don't believe courses are necessary if you want to learn programming.

Re: Why I Believe Scratch Is the Future of Programming

#47

Post by tonyjstark »

origami777 wrote: post #14
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…

I think the world would be a much better place if we exchanged "everyone learns to code" with "everyone learns safe and secure computer practices". That doesn't have the same ring to it but it's more important. Let's learn now to not open malware attachments before learning an if loop.

Yes, this would be a healthy approach.

Also I'm not a big fan of the just learning to code approach. software development is more than just hammering on the keyboard. It is about thinking about the right data structures, or data generally, it is about architecture.

Finally, if you have internet you have access to so much material to learn coding, why should you start with Scratch if there are thousands of free courses, books, tutorials for every other language. Think about learning Swift on the iPad, C# in the browser, ...

Re: Why I Believe Scratch Is the Future of Programming

#48

Post by k__ »

pedrow wrote: post #42

My daughter (9 years old) loves Scratch. For her I think the benefit is that she can do the part of programming that involves analysing a problem and extracting the logical steps that a computer could process, without all the fiddly matching up of brackets etc. The original Scratch was written in Smalltalk and it was possible (once you were ready!) to access the underlying Objects and do 'real programming' The curren…

It seems like Scratch is simply programming language tokens "visualized" as blocks instead of text.

I think this is a good start. I mean you learn programming while doing it and don't have to remember everything. Should be easy to map this to other programming languages.

I mean, many of us programmers started with copying code around.

I did my first mIRC chat bot that got news via sockets by copying the socket code from another script. I didn't even know what arrays were back then.

Re: Why I Believe Scratch Is the Future of Programming

#49

Post by ldjb »

Scratch is a decent tool for learning to code and for prototyping (you can get something visual and interactive up and running insanely quickly). However, I wouldn't use it for building anything remotely serious (i.e. something I'm paid for), and I don't think Scratch was ever intended to be used in that way.

That said, I think there is huge potential for visual programming environments in general, particularly in education. At my university, a custom Scratch-like environment is used in the introductory programming module, and it helps students to learn the fundamental programming constructs (sequencing, selection and iteration) without worrying about syntax or compilation. I think it's important that those first learning to code are able to experiment and easily get things running, and that is something visual programming environments are good at enabling.

Re: Why I Believe Scratch Is the Future of Programming

#50

Post by tonyjstark »

andrewclunn wrote: post #18

I get that scratch doesn't require that a child can read or type yet, but really, shouldn't those be fundamentals that they learn first anyways?

and also, why need a child so young start with programming? I heard playing outside is rather healthy and socializing.

Of course if they're interested, why not, as long as it is fun.

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