n=1, I started programming with Scratch and it led to my software-adjacent career today.
Has early Scratch experience led to fulfilling careers?
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Re: Has early Scratch experience led to fulfilling careers?
#62I understand why people value the code John Carmack has released but I do not understand why people value his public statements. "eventually id Tech 5 is going to be open source also. This is still the law of the land at id"[0] "Great! I think Microsoft has been a good parent company for gaming IPs"[1] [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20081003111457/http://www.linuxg... [1] https://x.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/130806985…
He's been clearly corrupted by money, long ago.
Re: Has early Scratch experience led to fulfilling careers?
#63My kid is 13 now and has been creating Scratch games since the pandemic, he's set to be a game designer/developer as a career: https://gamejolt.com/@S10_Studio
I'm legit baffled by his creativity and clever visual jokes.
Re: Has early Scratch experience led to fulfilling careers?
#64I loved Scratch as a kid and got really deep into it. Not sure if I could call myself a "success story" but it did get me much more comfortable with programming!
Before Scratch I think the two biggest barriers in my childhood programming experiments were 1) Remembering all the different syntax and function names, and 2) Being bored by the basic CLI programs that all tutorials started with. Scratch helped with both of those. It had a palette with all possible commands available to you, it was impossible to make syntax errors, and it was visually-oriented so I could dive right into making games. Lowering those barriers helped me learn how to structure code in a fun way, so when I did eventually go back to the "real" languages I felt much less lost.
I also remember really loving the social features, getting comments on my work, and collaborating with people.
I'd love to see more experimentation in this area, there's definitely potential for a more modernized educational language that builds on these ideas.
Re: Has early Scratch experience led to fulfilling careers?
#65I was a naysayer before I had kids, too. I now am able to get a first person view of Scratch usage through my child who likes the platform very much.
What's missing in a lot of these discussions about Scratch efficacy is the community aspect. Kids like getting a response in the comments section from their peers and many of the alternatives proposed don't have that. Without an active community, a lot of kids might never use the alternative despite being "better". In the case of Scratch (unlike Khan academy, which he completed also), he keeps using it, keeps trying things and keeps coming back because of the rewarding community interactions.
Re: Has early Scratch experience led to fulfilling careers?
#66I still see picture books as an introductory path to literacy for kids, but unlike posting fan fiction on AO3, I have never heard a “success story”, where someone credits their early experience with picture books as key to a fulfilling career. Anyone?
The snarky analogy doesn’t really really work because plenty of people actually do credit video games for their successful career, myself included. Thanks, Roblox.
I'm guessing that Roblox will be responsible for more people learning programming than essentially any other single entity
Re: Has early Scratch experience led to fulfilling careers?
#67Most students (90%+) in the CS program I teach at have used scratch as their first language and went on to have a good career. Whenever I ask they have great things to say about Scratch and how it fueled their love for programming.
Re: Has early Scratch experience led to fulfilling careers?
#68I think it's the same story as with Snap Circuits for learning electronics, or baking soda + citric acid "chemistry sets". Many parents really wanted their kids to have a STEM career, and so we lowered the bar to the point where STEM-shaped educational activities are accessible to any kid. But because there's no bar to entry, playing with these toys doesn't reliably translate into motivation to really learn electronics, programming, or something like that. That motivation still manifests only in a small percentage of kids. Maybe we're making that percentage go up slightly, but it's a small effect.
FWIW, it's not exactly a new phenomenon. Two decades before Scratch, many schools were using Logo to teach kids programming, probably with similar success rates. Stuff like that is probably good even if it doesn't lead to a STEM "success story". It makes kids actively participate instead of scrolling Tiktok all day.
Re: Has early Scratch experience led to fulfilling careers?
#69I still see picture books as an introductory path to literacy for kids, but unlike posting fan fiction on AO3, I have never heard a “success story”, where someone credits their early experience with picture books as key to a fulfilling career. Anyone?
Dolly Parton's Imagination Library project had to have had some justification.
I think picture books are not the same as Scratch. Scratch is much farther along that process. An equivalent might be comic books or graphic novels, which people actually do attribute a love of either as an introduction to fulfilling careers.
Re: Has early Scratch experience led to fulfilling careers?
#70It's not always your first exposure that you later identify as a catalyst. I'm an American that took a C++ class in Europe when I was 13 (forward thinking school in retrospect). But when asked, I usually say scripting RS bots was what got me into the field, because I had fun and it was more memorable. But would I have chosen to do that had I no idea what coding was? Maybe not...
> not always your first exposure
Great point. How many professional sports players credit their elementary aged PE classes to their success in sport (as opposed to say crediting a high school coach)?
Progressive, unbridled access and exposure is key.