It looks cool. It reminds me of old-school Flash programming - which also introduced a generation of kids programming in general, because you could make cool games and animations.
Snap! 6 is here, and it's all about scale
11–20 of 59 posts
Re: Snap! 6 is here, and it's all about scale
#12That is some seriously impressive improvement on performance and memory use; I'd be interested to know what exactly they did to do that (ex. did they realize they could rearrange something to do the same thing with less work, or is this just a lot of little optimizations adding up?). Also cool, if a little weird to me, to see full-blown map-reduce and APL-like features; I feel like that moves away from the "beginner'…
“Snap! is Scheme disguised as Scratch.” -Brian Harvey
S3
btw do people transition out from snap! ? do they go emacs ? vi ? IDE ?
Re: Snap! 6 is here, and it's all about scale
#13I taught a high-school Intro to CS course last year with the TEALs program ( https://tealsk12.org ). I was very unenthusiastic when I heard that the first semester was taught using Snap, but I was wrong. Snap is a pretty awesome way to introduce someone to programming (much more powerful and reliable than other block-based programming environments I've tinkered with like the Kano kit). The one really terrible thing a…
Autosave is not exactly trivial, but it's definitely on the list. I do agree it's something incredibly useful!
(Doing it right also can incur some costs, and that's something we would need funding for...)
Re: Snap! 6 is here, and it's all about scale
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Snap! is Scheme disguised as Scratch.” -Brian Harvey
S3 btw do people transition out from snap! ? do they go emacs ? vi ? IDE ?
Most students end up taking a course in another language. At UC Berkeley, they go from Snap! to Python, and it's typically something like VSCode or Sublime as the IDE.
Re: Snap! 6 is here, and it's all about scale
#15That is some seriously impressive improvement on performance and memory use; I'd be interested to know what exactly they did to do that (ex. did they realize they could rearrange something to do the same thing with less work, or is this just a lot of little optimizations adding up?). Also cool, if a little weird to me, to see full-blown map-reduce and APL-like features; I feel like that moves away from the "beginner'…
The idea is to be able to easily move someone from beginning features to more complex stuff. The APL functions are new, but in the past this meant story-based projects to using tools like lambdas, map, filter, etc. When done as part of a course, it's definitely something students can learn.But you can do everything in Snap! without those features, too. (The FOR EACH construct for example works just by dropping in a stack of blocks, but you could choose if desired to pass in a lambda and do different parameter binding...but not many people really do that. ;))
We've played around with various ideas for how many blocks to show and it's definitely a work in progress constantly, but the current design is because most people are using Snap! in the context of a course where there's a push to learn those tools and so they get used pretty frequently. :)
Re: Snap! 6 is here, and it's all about scale
#16Note: it's not related to the package manager.
Re: Snap! 6 is here, and it's all about scale
#17I taught a high-school Intro to CS course last year with the TEALs program ( https://tealsk12.org ). I was very unenthusiastic when I heard that the first semester was taught using Snap, but I was wrong. Snap is a pretty awesome way to introduce someone to programming (much more powerful and reliable than other block-based programming environments I've tinkered with like the Kano kit). The one really terrible thing a…
Autosave is not exactly trivial, but it's definitely on the list. I do agree it's something incredibly useful! (Doing it right also can incur some costs, and that's something we would need funding for...)
Good point, I was definitely too flippant about the amount of work involved. Glad to hear it's on the list though!
Re: Snap! 6 is here, and it's all about scale
#18I taught a high-school Intro to CS course last year with the TEALs program ( https://tealsk12.org ). I was very unenthusiastic when I heard that the first semester was taught using Snap, but I was wrong. Snap is a pretty awesome way to introduce someone to programming (much more powerful and reliable than other block-based programming environments I've tinkered with like the Kano kit). The one really terrible thing a…
Autosave is not exactly trivial, but it's definitely on the list. I do agree it's something incredibly useful! (Doing it right also can incur some costs, and that's something we would need funding for...)
Local storage might be a lifesaver here. Just in case someone forgets to save offer auto recovery. This can be done client side with no server costs.
Re: Snap! 6 is here, and it's all about scale
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Autosave is not exactly trivial, but it's definitely on the list. I do agree it's something incredibly useful! (Doing it right also can incur some costs, and that's something we would need funding for...)
Local storage might be a lifesaver here. Just in case someone forgets to save offer auto recovery. This can be done client side with no server costs.
Trust me, I know. But even here we run into issues, such as projects over the local storage limit, and the fact that (well, until COVID...sigh), a non-trivial number of students were in computer labs that contained programs like deep freeze making anything local storage based headache inducing as a means of support.
Re: Snap! 6 is here, and it's all about scale
#20Jens Mönig and Brian Harvey both received a National Technology Leadership Summit (NTLS) Educational Technology Leadership Award for their impact on educational technology over the course of a lifetime, for their work on Snap! https://ntls.info/ntls-educational-leadership-award/brian-ha... >[...] Snap! is a remarkable technological achievement. However, like Logo, its greatest achievement is arguably the educational…
Very well deserved, Jens is an awesome person.