Waterbear still has my vote for generating Javascript with the block based coding metaphore
Google Blockly - a visual programming language
121–129 of 129 posts
Re: Google Blockly - a visual programming language
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
have you tried BYOB [1]? It's "an advanced offshoot of Scratch" [1] http://byob.berkeley.edu/
That website is glorious :). Yeah, I think this might go a bit far. Scratch's community sadly isn't so big, further fragmentation won't help that much I think. And the platform doesn't make a very solid impression to me. That's why I like google's idea, I hope they pour some money into this.
Scratch not so big ? ... http://scratch.mit.edu has over 2.5 million projects posted to it and over 1 million registered users !
Re: Google Blockly - a visual programming language
#123Love this idea for teaching kids. Reminds me of the visual programming in Click N Create / Multimedia Fusion / Games factory which was/is very advanced and powerful. Given sufficient resource and polish something like this could be awesome.
interesting attempt; things on my mind; what if I colorize my python code based on block depth or what if we do a 3D version of this; and what if we do a game of "angry blocks" to program.
http://scriptastic.greenbush.us uses the Waterbear framework fo let kids create scripts for the 3D objects they create using Opensim -> http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page .. tons of fun when combines with Scratch
Re: Google Blockly - a visual programming language
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
That website is glorious :). Yeah, I think this might go a bit far. Scratch's community sadly isn't so big, further fragmentation won't help that much I think. And the platform doesn't make a very solid impression to me. That's why I like google's idea, I hope they pour some money into this.
Scratch not so big ? ... http://scratch.mit.edu has over 2.5 million projects posted to it and over 1 million registered users !
Yep it seems like it has grown quite a bit since I've looked at it last time. I still think a platform like this should be bigger - as in a substantial fraction of school children big. Every child should try playing with something like scratch, just to see whether (s)he might like it and go into programming. When I was a child I went straight from some learning program for children with some graphical macro editor (poor man's hypercard) to VB6 and it led me to what I am now. That's why I think it's really important what toys we give to our children.
Re: Google Blockly - a visual programming language
#125google blockly isn't new. it was obviously inspired by www.waterbearlang.org
Re: Google Blockly - a visual programming language
#126google blockly isn't new. it was obviously inspired by www.waterbearlang.org
Re: Google Blockly - a visual programming language
#127Noooooo they finished it before I did =(
Re: Google Blockly - a visual programming language
#128Looks like s-expressions to me.
Blockly was influenced by App Inventor, which has Scheme inside:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_Inventor_for_Android#Histor...
Re: Google Blockly - a visual programming language
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed. I wrote a similar framework in Actionscript / Flex a few years ago, actually with a lot of input from the Scratch team. I've been thinking about porting it to JS recently. Glad to see someone beat me to it :) Edit: Here's my old Actionscript library in case anyone is interested. https://github.com/trun/flashblocks
Yep, actually someone else (Dethe Elza) already beat you to a JS version: http://waterbearlang.com/garden.html?plugin=canvas It was presented at JSConf last year: http://blip.tv/jsconf/jsconf2011-dethe-elza-5942746
On the other hand, if you want to help contribute to Waterbear, it is an open community. The code is on github: github.com/waterbearlang/waterbear and the mailing list is here: http://lists.waterbearlang.com/listinfo.cgi/discuss-waterbea...
Waterbear isn't a language like Scratch, it's a toolkit to create a Scratch-like visual programming interface to any language you like. There is active development on wrappers for Javascript, Java robotics, and Arduino.