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Microsoft MakeCode

makecode.com

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Re: Microsoft MakeCode

#61

Post by chrisan »

madeofpalk wrote: post #59
nukeop wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't have the analytical approach engineering-minded people have. They understand most of their surrounding reality in terms of blackboxes. Pull a trigger and a bullet comes out. Press a button and receive a parking card. Touch the screen and the facebook app launches. They're not interested in the internal mechanisms. And if you're not already interested in that, then no amount of coding bootcamps are g…

Sure, but a lot of people don't have the mindset required for cooking or construction or sports, yet these are still things we teach in school and try to make accessible for more people.

Or any of the liberal arts.

The "well rounded" argument works both ways!

Re: Microsoft MakeCode

#62

Post by LoSboccacc »

nukeop wrote: post #41

It's sad that these "get everyone and their dog into 'coding'" initiatives by large companies are just attempts to provide cheap workers for themselves in the future. There's so many of them, and yet there's no evidence that they help anyone other than the company's PR team in generating exposure and promoting their products.

> to provide cheap workers

doubtful, rarely the self taught can pass the hr screening

Re: Microsoft MakeCode

#63

Post by AshleysBrain »

Microsoft have tried this kind of thing more than once in the past, usually ultimately cancelling the projects. There was Microsoft Popfly (retired), Project Spark (retired), Microsoft Kodu (still going), now MakeCode. I suspect there are even more if you go further back.

Our startup has been doing the visual programming thing successfully for around 6 years now, and our latest tool is at www.construct.net. Maybe they should give us a call since it looks like they're struggling to get this right ;)

Re: Microsoft MakeCode

#64

Post by jordanwallwork »

I ran a code club at my local primary school last year using the micro:bits. They're awesome little devices, super simple to get some pretty effective results with. I had 15 kids aged 7 - 11, some of whom were there only because they went along to every after school club it's cheaper for working parents than a childminder, and all of them absolutely loved it. We did some great little projects - making 'musical instruments' with speakers and the gyroscope, making those buzzy 'steady hand' games, sending messages to one another via bluetooth, etc...

Re: Microsoft MakeCode

#65

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #58
pjmlp wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unemployed people would be helped if business wouldn't be so greedy in their selection criteria, and would give a position to anyone actually wanting to work there, instead of spending months looking for the perfect candidate that would be willing to work at the misery they want to pay. EDIT: typo

> spending months looking for the perfect candidate that would be willing to work at the misery that want to pay. That's what I don't understand. These companies completely forget the law of supply and demand when it comes to hiring. They keep complaining they can't find anyone yet the salary they are offering stays the same. I'll bet that if you double or triple what you're paying that shortage you're complaining ab…

> They keep complaining

The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

(PR honchos are kept from idleness, newspapers pipelines are filled, company didn't want to hire anyway, and maybe the gummint will drip in some cash for training internships. Win, win, win, win.)

Re: Microsoft MakeCode

#66

Post by AgentME »

gwilkes wrote: post #13
mynameisvlad wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, huh, I didn't even realize. I do wonder how far the two codebases have diverged (especially with the recent "Better Together" update on Bedrock). Kind of a shame MakeCode doesn't work on Java Edition, since that's where I invested my time.

I know what you mean but Bedrock just has much better performance. The ideal for me would be Bedrock on all the same platforms as Java (including Linux) with a supported way to make mods that didn't break on every version update

As long as we can also run our own servers! There is no server software available for people to run their own servers for the Bedrock edition. I was really surprised when I found that out.

Re: Microsoft MakeCode

#67

Post by js8 »

yaseer wrote: post #45
nukeop wrote: post #41

It's sad that these "get everyone and their dog into 'coding'" initiatives by large companies are just attempts to provide cheap workers for themselves in the future. There's so many of them, and yet there's no evidence that they help anyone other than the company's PR team in generating exposure and promoting their products.

This isn't the only reason. It's obvious that coding is becoming a skill on par with math for its utility in the modern world. If more people understand the fundamentals of coding, it will completely change the user interfaces and sophistication of applications in the future. People will be able to code up simple features and behaviours they need, for example.

I somewhat agree both with you and PP. But

> It's obvious that coding is becoming a skill on par with math for its utility in the modern world.

I am not sure it's obvious, sadly. I feel like having a programming environment on your computer is similar to having a workshop at home. So you could repair and build many physical things yourself.

I can imagine an alternate reality where most people have workshops in their homes, and they repair most (and build some) of the stuff they bought themselves. But it's not the highly-specialized, consumer-oriented society we live in (actually, I think this was more true in the past).

In a similar way, I could envision a world where everybody routinely scripts their applications to automate and customize them. But the trend seems to go the opposite way, away from scriptability, to specialized, task-oriented applications. So I am skeptical this world will happen.

I would love coding to become a new form of literacy, and I am certainly going to treat it like that with my kids. But I currently don't believe many people will use these skills on regular basis.

Addendum: It's interesting that the very same companies that want everybody to code are the ones that don't want the software buyers to have to customize the applications themselves, so they could sell them the customization.

Re: Microsoft MakeCode

#68

Post by anonytrary »

Lxr wrote: post #54
anonytrary wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sort of losing hope that it isn't a gimmick or fad Visual coding is huge among people who aren't technical. I first got into "programming" when I was 9, through lego robots, they had a visual control flow thingy, basically visual coding. I think that must have helped me understand programming and its implications much faster when I got into college. Visual programming is not ergonomic enough to justify never wr…

Was it Lego Mindstorms? Man I had so much fun with that as a kid. I would totally recommend it for learning to code too.

Yep, that's the one.

Re: Microsoft MakeCode

#69

Post by anonytrary »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #24
anonytrary wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sort of losing hope that it isn't a gimmick or fad Visual coding is huge among people who aren't technical. I first got into "programming" when I was 9, through lego robots, they had a visual control flow thingy, basically visual coding. I think that must have helped me understand programming and its implications much faster when I got into college. Visual programming is not ergonomic enough to justify never wr…

Just a correction: you are writing code with visual programming, its just visual code instead of textual code. You haven't gotten rid of code. VPLs are great for people who aren't programmers and don't wan to be programmers; e.g. Facebook designers using Quartz Composer or Orgami, game designers using Unreal blueprints, Blender, and so on.

To be very pedantic, the context makes it clear I'm using "code" as shorthand to refer only to written programs.

True, visual code may well be a first class citizen in programming. As of today, there are still programs people would not write visually. It's a tool for simple procedural work, which could change as the ergonomics get even better.

Re: Microsoft MakeCode

#70

Post by glaberficken »

agar wrote: post #29
leggomylibro wrote: post #14

Wow, cool - the 'block editor' looks a lot like Scratch. Is it Scratch? I'm having trouble finding many details about the technical side of it. I think 'visual programming' has a lot of promise for education, but...jeez, after looking into it for awhile I'm sort of losing hope that it isn't a gimmick or fad. Has anyone actually made a complex project with these initiatives, and had it spark an interest in computing/e…

Only a single data point, but Scratch has definitely sparked an interest in programming in my 12 year-old daughter. Though still early days, she has taken her first steps into learning Python. The concepts of loops, variables, counters, and even objects has definitely carried over from Scratch. She still spends most of her time in Scratch though, sometimes creating her own games or drawing programs, sometimes playing…

Exactly my view =)

I have a 7yo daughter and she has just tried some block based programming challenges and she loved tinkering and predicting what the program would do, and then fixing the bugs. Gave her a real sense of accomplishment.

I also don't think it will automatically send her on to a career as a programmer. But I think it is important for everyone nowadays to have at least an notion of how software works, given that there is software is almost everything we use these days...

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