I'm old enough that my first encounter with programming was though BBC BASIC and LOGO. I'd be interested how many of today's younger programmers had their first experience in coding while using a block based language, and what they're experience was like.
Ask HN: Did any of you first encounter programming through Scratch?
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Re: Ask HN: Did any of you first encounter programming through Scratch?
#2We did a little Cocoa first, and messed about a bit with html, but basically yeah I did. It was pitched as a fun exercise more than a learning opportunity, but we were bored out of our minds in that class and the teacher had little interest in teaching the material, and it seemed to hit very well with students.
Re: Ask HN: Did any of you first encounter programming through Scratch?
#3I’ve only seen it from the sidelines, but our 7 y.o. was introduced to it through an activity with Girl Scouts last year.
We went through a number of lessons via a website (which escapes me right more) and she was really into it. So much so, that we ended up downloading Scratch Junior and let her run free with it.
She uses it to make little interactive stories, with movement, audio recordings and the like. It’s pretty neat!
Now, whether that translates into her having more interest: I’m not sure. Her eyes kind of glaze over when she sees a wall of code on my screen when working from home.
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Side note: There is a board game called Robot Turtles that is supposedly good at teaching very basic programming concepts to kiddos, but she has had very little interest in ever playing it.
Re: Ask HN: Did any of you first encounter programming through Scratch?
#4yeah scratch, visual basic and swift playgrounds got me into it. Great for piquing interest, especially being able to see projects others built and interact with them.
Re: Ask HN: Did any of you first encounter programming through Scratch?
#5I’ve only seen it from the sidelines, but our 7 y.o. was introduced to it through an activity with Girl Scouts last year. We went through a number of lessons via a website (which escapes me right more) and she was really into it. So much so, that we ended up downloading Scratch Junior and let her run free with it. She uses it to make little interactive stories, with movement, audio recordings and the like. It’s prett…
Try web dev or game mods - when I was her age that was what I did and a lot of the joy was making something that I could immediately 'see' worked or not and interact with + that other people could use and talk to me about.
Re: Ask HN: Did any of you first encounter programming through Scratch?
#6My brother got me into programming with logo which is like the original turtle. It’s pretty cool. Definitely seared recursion into my mind. And after generating graphics on the cli I felt comfortable to do simple js games
Re: Ask HN: Did any of you first encounter programming through Scratch?
#7Yup. I wanted to learn programming as a child, but text-based languages scared me.
Re: Ask HN: Did any of you first encounter programming through Scratch?
#8I believe Minecraft redstone is what first got me into programming, if you don't find that sufficient then Minecraft also got me into Googling how to make a website with HTML/CSS (little me had no clue I needed JS), and eventually trying to make my own Minecraft (and other video games) in Unity using C#. I really owe Minecraft my career haha
Re: Ask HN: Did any of you first encounter programming through Scratch?
#9I’m 18 now and I got started with Scratch when I was 8. It teaches you to think logically without requiring you to learn about editors, the command line, interpreters/compilers, syntax, libraries, or the file system. As an eight-year-old I understood some but not much of that. The ability to open Scratch and create 2d games or other programs is probably why I’m successful today.
Re: Ask HN: Did any of you first encounter programming through Scratch?
#10I believe Minecraft redstone is what first got me into programming, if you don't find that sufficient then Minecraft also got me into Googling how to make a website with HTML/CSS (little me had no clue I needed JS), and eventually trying to make my own Minecraft (and other video games) in Unity using C#. I really owe Minecraft my career haha
Redstone circuitry never quite clicked for me, but it was setting up mods in the earlier Minecraft versions that really got me into tinkering with software