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Yes: https://scratch.mit.edu/download/
My kids got started with Scratch 1.4 on a Raspberry Pi. That's as far as we've gone with it. Scratch 2 was a lost cause from the start, and Scratch 3 leans way too hard into the "community" aspect of it. It's really too bad.
Folks here who used scratch with their kids, what is the next step after scratch? How did you introduce a language/platform to your kid? I have introduced python and my kid is able to pick it up, but am unable to come up with projects that sustain interest. It feels dry without UI and one shouldn't be doing web dev with python too. So what is the progression for python and kids?
Roblox Studio is, by far, the most encouraging environment I've see for kids. Being able to easily share a multiplayer 3D world with friends is a HUGE motivator. My 6yo has been using it almost daily for a few months now and things like Scratch never held his interest for more than a few hours total. Only downside is you need a decent PC for it to be usable.
If you’re interested in what’s on the backend I interviewed one of the infrastructure engineers and talked about it here https://youtu.be/QrBztSqCmlk
My 9 year old daughter surprised me yesterday with her little game made with Scratch. I was impressed. I surprised her back when I did user-testing haha. She discovered the fun world of bugs and user's doing things they shouldn't!
My 9 year old daughter surprised me yesterday with her little game made with Scratch. I was impressed. I surprised her back when I did user-testing haha. She discovered the fun world of bugs and user's doing things they shouldn't!
> I surprised her back when I did user-testing haha. She discovered the fun world of bugs and user's doing things they shouldn't! Oh... that path takes you to strange places. Mr. Fart’s Favorite Colors - https://medium.com/@blakeross/mr-fart-s-favorite-colors-3177... (7 years ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11231631 ) It starts when we’re 8 and coding our very first program. “What’s your favorite color?” i…
I am a Scratch-taught programmer in that I played with Scratch in 5th grade and ended up programming professionally. It was great and I'm sure they've done a good job with it since. I'm very, very grateful.
Anybody remember Logo? That turtle graphics program? That's what they taught us at school. Programming for kids surely has changed a lot since then.
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…
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Also not OP, but I literally just learned about Hedy [1] today. No experience except from clicking through it for 20 minutes, but it looks quite interesting, taking somebody from a language with a very simple syntax (and limited functionality) to full blown Python, one level at a time, by making the language gradually more complicated (and more powerful). [1] https://www.hedycode.com/
I also quickly went through the basic tasks in 17 levels of Hedy in about 20 mins. (I just know a little programming.) Hedy is text-based and introduces ideas such as: print, entering variables, if, else, repeat, ... I really liked the gradual approach, which keeps you going forward onto the next level. There are additional tasks at each level (see tabs at top) which I didn't try. It seems that these tasks are best d…
and also, why introduce an echo command in level 1 only to drop it in level 2? they could have waited and introduced ask in level 2 or 3 even.
i love the quiz questions though, they even make me, as an experienced programmer, think
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…
Now Scratch has more than filled that gap for my own children, and while they may never choose to pursue a career in IT, the fact that they are able to explore the field so easily is invaluable and may help them down the line.
Thanks to you and your team for all you do!
