Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Scratch is the world’s largest coding community for children

scratch.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 397 posts

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

#241

Post by em-bee »

brw12 wrote: post #231
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…

[I was an engineer at Scratch for 4 years] The "what do we do after Scratch" question is tricky! There's no super clear answer (and a big market opportunity!) It is important for people getting deeper into programming to learn a text-based language. But I do want to say that you don't need to stop using Scratch -- lots of adults use it, and it's really great for many things... e.g., this memory portrait of my mother…

etoys for squeak has the ability to switch between blocks and code, as a way to learn about the code that the blocks generate.

it would be interesting to have a programming language that is essentially a text form of scratch and that can drive the same animations so that you could learn the text syntax and continue creating the same games, or even translate from one to the other.

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

#242

Post by CoryAlexMartin »

memco wrote: post #19

Haven’t worked with scratch myself, but I do enjoy HelloComics’ stream where they’re making a pretty fun looking 2d metroidvania style game in Scrtatch. If you’re interested in seeing how it could be used for a large scale project it might be worth a look: https://m.twitch.tv/hellocomics .

He’s actually using Stencyl, which has a programming interface based on Scratch.

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

#243

Post by Dalewyn »

dfex wrote: post #230
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…

I grew up with Applesoft BASIC and later HyperCard - as a kid, I was never a "Developer", but I was always curious - the fact that I could take someone else's source code and change it to my will felt like a superpower. 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 ma…

>the fact that I could take someone else's source code and change it to my will felt like a superpower.

The ability to go and tell your computer to do something and then see the computer do it is, in a word, mindblowing. I know it was mindblowing for childhood me.

My experiences with programming were HTML4.01 and CSS2, PHP, Ruby, and some more abstract forms of "programming" (RPG Maker!), and they all gave me a healthy if basic understanding of how computers work and how much power a keyboard and mouse can give to an individual with the proper will and gumption.

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

#244

Post by khochesh_kushat »

nrjames wrote: post #232

As a parent who used Scratch with their kids... it all started out great and then veered into being an unregulated social media network lacking any ability to create a space where they could build and learn to code in private. It wasn't long before they were doing it only for the likes and, without constant supervision, trying to figure out how to join various groups and challenges simply for the attention they would…

You can run a local copy, which I believe is unconnected from anything online. It's what I plan to set up for my daughter.

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

#245

Post by bjackman »

123pie123 wrote: post #238
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…

>"Scratch is not built to be a "teach your kid programming languages" You might want to change the wikipedia page that describes you to the whole world (from the first line of wikipedia)> Scratch is a high-level block-based visual programming language and website aimed primarily at children as an educational tool for programming, with a target audience of ages 8 to 16. I would say scratch is a brilliant first languag…

I think the message was more that the aim of the project is not to teach kids to be software engineers but rather a platform for creativity and cognitive exploration.

That is not exactly incompatible with the Wikipedia page! It's a programming language and aimed at children but the aim is not to get your kids ready for Go and C++, it's to engage their brain in something positive.

(And of course, neither incompatible with the claim that it _also_ prepares kids to learn Go and C++)

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

#246

Post by trevcanhuman »

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…

As another commenter has said, I'd recommend Processing[0], a java-based language with a graphics library. One of the best ways to get into text-based programming languages.

The tutorials I would recommend are from the Coding Train youtube channel.

You can make tons of games and animations with this, I mostly used it for 2d games.

I have only tried it on high school 10th graders, it's worked pretty good for getting them into object oriented programmming.

[0] https://processing.org

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

#247

Post by ptd »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #236
ptd wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does she like her job? I only ask because you specified comp in a way that suggested that is what is most important to you(and her).

Good question. She actually got a degree in chemical engineering not CS, but then switched over to fulltime software dev at her company a couple of years out of school as she liked that more -- so yeah, I would say so.

Awesome! Glad to hear things worked out.

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

#248

Post by em-bee »

nrjames wrote: post #232

As a parent who used Scratch with their kids... it all started out great and then veered into being an unregulated social media network lacking any ability to create a space where they could build and learn to code in private. It wasn't long before they were doing it only for the likes and, without constant supervision, trying to figure out how to join various groups and challenges simply for the attention they would…

trying to figure out how to join various groups and challenges simply for the attention they would receive

were they not learning anything in that process?

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

#249

Post by tropicaljacket »

nrjames wrote: post #232

As a parent who used Scratch with their kids... it all started out great and then veered into being an unregulated social media network lacking any ability to create a space where they could build and learn to code in private. It wasn't long before they were doing it only for the likes and, without constant supervision, trying to figure out how to join various groups and challenges simply for the attention they would…

Yeah.. another thing is there is a lot of published games in Scratch (from other users), many are very tempting to play/try out and often the Scratch session just turns into playing those games without educational/learning activity. Anyone figured out how to avoid this?

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

#250

Post by schneems »

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…

Wow. Thanks for posting! I’m curious of your thoughts on other visual programming languages. Specifically LabVIEW.

My first job out of college was at NI where they heavily use LabVIEW. Every engineer in my cohort thought that paradigm was going to take off and over a decade later, it clearly hasn’t. One large factor is cost and proprietary tech, but I’m surprised few outside of the hardware testing world even know such a thing exists.

I now code in Rust and Ruby and don’t yearn for a visual language, but I do wish people who needed to code something up quick could do it without getting knee deep in IDEs, syntax, and terminals.

I’m curious if you’ve got an opinion on that space. What’s holding it back, and if we will ever see a “killer language” for visual programming in the productivity focused space? What do you think would be needed for scratch to fill that role?

Post reply on HN