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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?

#23

Post by Georgelemental »

I did, about a decade ago. I remember having lots of fun with it. The block-based approach is nice in that it makes syntax errors impossible. It's easy to see how different pieces can or can't fit together. But one outgrows it relatively quickly, I think.

Re: Ask HN: Did any of you first encounter programming through Scratch?

#24

Post by rahimnathwani »

dnsge wrote: post #18

I'm 20 now and got started programming with Scratch sometime before I was 10... don't remember exactly when. I completely attribute it to my interest in programming and is the reason I'm now in school completing a computer science degree. You can actually go into surprising depth with Scratch. For example, I wrote multiplayer game engines using cloud variables to store player position, chat, etc and let people play t…

I'm curious how you got started and got hooked?

My son (7yo) likes 'Scratch Jr' (iPad app) but he's mainly using it like a drawing app. He likes to create characters and then animate them a bit. He's not using any of the more advanced features like making one character moved when bumped by another.

I'd like to think he'd enjoy Scratch, but I'm not sure how to introduce it to him in a way that he might find interesting.

Do you recall what the first few things you did were?

Re: Ask HN: Did any of you first encounter programming through Scratch?

#25

Post by rahimnathwani »

Wingy wrote: post #9

I’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.

I'm curious if you remember the first couple of things you saw in Scratch, or what made you think it was cool?

I remember the first computer program I saw was something that printed 'hello' in a continuously-scrolling zig zag pattern on the screen. It was just two FOR loops in BASIC. Something like this:

      10 REPEAT
      20 FOR x = 1 TO 10
      30 PRINT TAB(x,1);"hello"
      60 NEXT x
      70 FOR x = 10 TO 1 STEP -1
      80 PRINT TAB(x,1);"hello"
     110 NEXT x
     120 UNTIL FALSE
That wowed me, and made me want to learn more. I'm not sure what the equivalent would be for a kid that's grown up with an iPad and other devices.

Re: Ask HN: Did any of you first encounter programming through Scratch?

#26

Post by gumby »

My son used it and now likes (and works in) Java.

My gf’s two kids were introduced to programming with Scratch. One was utterly frustrated and gave up on it after the course. The other liked the idea of programming and is now taking a Java based class in school.

There’s some hope that the last kid won’t like Java and may be willing to switch to something better, else it’s 0/3 in my opinion.

Re: Ask HN: Did any of you first encounter programming through Scratch?

#27

Post by BrandoElFollito »

This is part of the curriculum in France so anyone who is today around 20 would have started with Scratch.

I do not think this left lasting traces in pupils' minds.

Then in high school they are taught Python the worst possible way. Similar on how they teach math or physics.

I love my country but how scientific classes are taught is terrible. There is a sadistic obsession with math (this reminds me the way ducks are fed for foie gras) where they teach completely useless stuff (to a point you cannot imagine) born in the minds of tortured 70 years old ministers.

Physics is the same - "how to choose the worse topics to make you hate physics" was on the bedstand of the ones who invented the curriculum.

My son once told me "dad, I do not know how people whose parents cannot explain this stuff manage to go though". This were the words of a top student of a top HS in France. You can imagine how it is elsewhere.

Re: Ask HN: Did any of you first encounter programming through Scratch?

#28

Post by armchairhacker »

Yes.

My second language was python. But I just wanted to make cool games, and Python’s graphics were too low-level and verbose (compared to Scratch at least where you get a canvas with 0 code), so I wrote much more in Scratch until later on (my third language was Objective-C and a big part of that was Interface Builder, so I also had “graphics-for-free” there more or less)

Re: Ask HN: Did any of you first encounter programming through Scratch?

#30

Post by egypturnash »

sunday_serif wrote: post #13

Scratch wasn’t my first “encounter” per say, but I did write my first non-trivial program with scratch. Everything else before that was just tinkering. In high school (2010s) I was familiar with programming from the outside in. I remember knowing that Ruby on Rails was a big thing. I had tried to learn ruby a handful of times and got lost in the process. I was super excited about wine because it helped me play boot l…

> You just clicked new and were off and going! (This is what I imagine BASIC was back in the day)

Pretty much. Except more so: you turned on your C64 and the BASIC interpreter was right there. No libraries, no dependencies, just you and the machine.

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