Scratch is the world’s largest coding community for children • Hacker News Board

Re: Scratch is the world’s largest coding community for children

#121

Post by jackson1442 » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 4:47 PM UTC

ar9av wrote: post #103

Scratch gets a lot of hate with semi-experienced programmers (the kind to browse this sub) because of its simplicity, but it's actually really good. It teaches you basic programming concepts without all of the complexity of other programming languages. I remember back in school, some of the students in my computer science classes didn't understand the basic concepts of programming: variables, loops, functions, etc. a…

I think it's great- most of the hate probably comes from people who came into their first programming class already knowing how to code to some degree and had to "downgrade" from a traditional language to Scratch to learn along with the class.

I've been there, but there's still some cool stuff you can do when you bring in your outside programming knowledge.

Re: Scratch is the world’s largest coding community for children

#122

Post by john-tells-all » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 4:52 PM UTC

thesausageking wrote: post #101

My 8 yo loves Scratch. She's made over 30 apps with it and has had a great time. However, now that she's reached the limits of what it can do, I have been frustrated that there isn't a natural place for her to graduate to. And Scratch does get really limited quickly. There are unofficial forks like SheepTester's one which let you drop JavaScript into Scratch projects, but they're not easy to use. We've failed a few t…

Agree. My nephew has made 800 Scratch projects, which is mind-blowing. I'd love to offer him a smooth path to other development. However:

- Python has graphics, but it's a very steep climb from the simple drag-and-drop of Scratch

- Javascript has easy UI elements, but he'd have to learn HTML and other things

Scratch is so different from "straight" programming, I'm not sure if it's worth his time to learn JS and then translate his Scratch knowledge to it.

Re: Scratch is the world’s largest coding community for children

#123

Post by datkam » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 4:53 PM UTC

Retr0id wrote: post #109

n3storm wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many kids created several user profiles. Most of the times when they "level up" and for example "learn functions" (custom blocks), instead of create new projects with the learning old ones they create a new user profile so I would at least divide 103 million users by two.

Anecdotally, I have at least 3 GitHub profiles

I have many profiles on any platform that I use a lot (at least 15 on HN and 15 on reddit).

Re: Scratch is the world’s largest coding community for children

#124

Post by hajile » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 4:55 PM UTC

photochemsyn wrote: post #30

I'd imagine learning at least a little Python alongside Scratch would be more optimal than Scratch alone. It's like bilingual education, it has great benefits although individuals may gravitate towards a preferred option. Perhaps it's a bit like comparing Minecraft to Factorio: https://www.idtech.com/blog/scratch-vs-python Looking around, it also seems possible to set up your own Scratch server, which is comparable t…

Scratch now uses blockly under the surface and blockly itself is written in JS. If you wanted to extend things, JS seems like a more natural choice.

Re: Scratch is the world’s largest coding community for children

#125

Post by lkajslkjdd » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 4:57 PM UTC

thesausageking wrote: post #101

My 8 yo loves Scratch. She's made over 30 apps with it and has had a great time. However, now that she's reached the limits of what it can do, I have been frustrated that there isn't a natural place for her to graduate to. And Scratch does get really limited quickly. There are unofficial forks like SheepTester's one which let you drop JavaScript into Scratch projects, but they're not easy to use. We've failed a few t…

The Microsoft Makecode editor allows you to switch between block and JS, which can help with this.

More embedded orientated but still an interesting idea.

https://makecode.microbit.org/#editor

Re: Scratch is the world’s largest coding community for children

#126

Post by danabrams » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 5:04 PM UTC

I took a refactoring class where we used scratch and it was a lot of fun.

I now have a 5-month old and I can't wait to introduce him to scratch jr in a few years.

Re: Scratch is the world’s largest coding community for children

#127

Post by distcs » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 5:09 PM UTC

Retr0id wrote: post #106

distcs wrote: post #105

Not a Scratch user. Also not a child here. A grown up software programmer. But I did try Scratch and I could not make much sense of it. Maybe I am missing something. So read this comment as a request for help. The last time I tried, I remember I had to drag and drop building blocks available as tiles. Some tiles made the character turn right. Some tiles did something else. Some implemented conditionals. Am I remember…

Scratch also has variables, lists, if/else and looping control flow structures, and procedures (the main limitation, imho, being that procedures don't have scoped local variables and cannot return a value) It also has event-based concurrency.

Are they all available as tiles to be dragged and dropped? Or can I type it out too with a keyboard?

Re: Scratch is the world’s largest coding community for children

#128

Post by varun_ch » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 5:09 PM UTC

cgk wrote: post #83

Full disclosure: Principal Software Engineer here on the Scratch backend... Scratch is not built to be a "teach your kid programming languages" system, it is based on the work and ideas of the Life Long Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab (the director of this group is Professor Mitch Resnick, the LEGO, Papert Professor of Learning Research). The Papert part is where the term Mindstorms comes from ( https://www.a…

Thank you for the amazing work you and the Scratch Team do. I want to second the comment that Scratch works. I'm 16 years old and I discovered Scratch when I was 7. Soon I will be starting my professional career (hopefully something in computer science/engineering/cybersecurity), and it's all thanks to Scratch and the amazing community you have fostered. I don't think I would have ever even considered computers as something interesting to me unless I discovered Scratch.

Thank you.

Re: Scratch is the world’s largest coding community for children

#129

Post by freedomben » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 5:11 PM UTC

datkam wrote: post #123

Retr0id wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, I have at least 3 GitHub profiles

I have many profiles on any platform that I use a lot (at least 15 on HN and 15 on reddit).

Genuine question: why? I only have one, and I wonder if I'm missing something.

Re: Scratch is the world’s largest coding community for children

#130

Post by varun_ch » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 5:14 PM UTC

davepeck wrote: post #23

Seattle Public Schools participates in code.org’s “hour of code” program, which introduces students to programming in general and to the (delightfully good) free resources and programming environments on both code.org and scratch.mit.edu. My daughter had her first “hour” in first grade and it stuck; she loves toying with scratch and making little games. Both organizations are doing amazing work.

Hour of Code is wonderful. I think my old school was one of the first to try it, in 2013 or 2014, and that's how I discovered my love for computers. It's a really great initiative that has no doubt impacted thousands of people around the world. I hope Hour of Code and Scratch continue to exist for years to come.