Has early Scratch experience led to fulfilling careers? • Hacker News Board

Re: Has early Scratch experience led to fulfilling careers?

#81

Post by codingdave » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 7:21 PM UTC

I worked with some of the folks who introduced coding into school districts way back when that movement started, so I have a bit of inside knowledge.

The biggest anecdote I'd share is that learning to code as early as 1st grade unexpectedly led to children taking the ability to troubleshoot problems and using it across all their subjects in school. They started to treat struggles in other classes as debugging assignments: "What went wrong? What do I need to fix?" Their entire attitude changed from pass/fail into optimization. It has led to academic improvements across entire school districts, which was not at all expected but was a delightful surprise.

So the question posed seems fairly irrelevant to me. Maybe some of those kids grew up to be coders, maybe they did not. Either way, it helped their education.

Re: Has early Scratch experience led to fulfilling careers?

#82

Post by conorh » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 7:26 PM UTC

Who knows about a career, but my kid was super into scratch and has now moved on to godot. I think the learning curve was excellent and helped by a few things: the built in community, the see inside button and the ability to work on projects on a locked down browser/computer at school.

Re: Has early Scratch experience led to fulfilling careers?

#83

Post by paimapi » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 7:41 PM UTC

brcmthrowaway wrote: post #62

RunSet wrote: post #58

I 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.

I think it's just typical c-suite ego. get enough success stories under your belt and suddenly every thing you've ever thought is, as Eggers once titled, a Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (even the stuff that has little to nothing to do with what you've been successful at - in this case knowing how software works vs knowing how pedagogy works)

Re: Has early Scratch experience led to fulfilling careers?

#84

Post by em-bee » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 8:43 PM UTC

codingdave wrote: post #81

I worked with some of the folks who introduced coding into school districts way back when that movement started, so I have a bit of inside knowledge. The biggest anecdote I'd share is that learning to code as early as 1st grade unexpectedly led to children taking the ability to troubleshoot problems and using it across all their subjects in school. They started to treat struggles in other classes as debugging assignm…

it's not an irrelevant question if helping kids find fulfilling careers is the goal. what you are saying is that scratch is worthwhile even if that isn't the goal, which i think is awesome in its own right.

Re: Has early Scratch experience led to fulfilling careers?

#85

Post by anon291 » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 9:58 PM UTC

matherial wrote: post #68

I 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 electroni…

You have to have a certain grit to really succeed in STEM. The key lie of the kits is that... it's not easy. If having things be easy is your thing, then this is not something you want to do. And I don't mean 'easy' by 'not requiring work'. There are many easy things that are themselves lucrative careers because they require work that people don't want to do / aren't good at. STEM is 'hard' in the sense that there's not always an obvious next step. For example, right now, I have started a side business developing property. That's its own adventure, completely the opposite of STEM in many ways... the way forward is always pretty obvious. There's no random 'bug' or 'error' that happens without explanation. The difficulty in that field is simply execution. STEM is not like that. You can be a great executor, but if you don't know what to work on, then there's no point. Not sure if I'm doing a good job explaining the difference, but it's how I view it.

That being said, I use scratch to teach my kids programming. While computers are only a small piece of STEM, I think the zero marginal cost nature of it which allows unbounded trial and error is an amazing learning tool.

Re: Has early Scratch experience led to fulfilling careers?

#86

Post by desertrider12 » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 10:51 PM UTC

masfoobar wrote: post #60

Where are you likely to hear a "Success Story" especially an adult who likely moved on from Scratch since they were... what.. 10 years old. Perhaps younger. Truth is you are either going to be interested in programming.. or not. The question is how the brain triggers to get you interested. I could argue the starting point (for me) was Visual Studio 6.0. (1998) Or.. maybe.. it was Turbo Pascal and Turbo C. (1997) Or..…

scratch was the trigger for me just as you say. I was turning 11 when we used it at school (28 now). A year or so later I was reading Java for Dummies and making little tools on the TI-84. Then learning C++ and python on a raspberry pi 1B. I’m grateful to that computer lab teacher who thought scratch was worth teaching.

Re: Has early Scratch experience led to fulfilling careers?

#87

Post by enobrev » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 11:18 PM UTC

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #31

enobrev wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely agreed. I had a trash-80 in the early 80s and used to copy BASIC from magazines, and then in the mid 90s I bought a book with a CD in it that taught me how to set up perl-based e-commerce store, which I set up for my mom's retail shop. Neither of those got me interested in programming. The event in my life that got me there was around 2000, when I bought a Cold Fusion 4 book off of a street vendor - litera…

This really made me think about what got me interested in programming and I have no idea. In HS, I had a Physics teacher who had a TRS-80 (Model 3, I think) and he would let us use it during Lunch for whatever. But I was already interested at that point. We had a "programming" class where we programmed some kind of computer in some unknown language, but again, I was already interested in programming before then: that…

To your point I think I'll adjust what I was saying a bit. I was definitely interested. I always thought it would be cool to be able to program. There was good media to make it intriguing from afar. But I had nobody in my life to help me understand.

My mom did a great job making sure I always had a computer but she didn't know enough about them to help.

Elementary school put us in front of them and taught us how to type and let us play oregon trail and print shop, but that wasn't it. And my high school has us programming in Pascal. Meh.

When I was in my 20s, in a new city, working to pay my own way I found the determination needed to teach myself. It absolutely helped that the internet was becoming this wealth of information for the self-taught. That was my launch pad. I definitely think everything else helped get me there

Re: Has early Scratch experience led to fulfilling careers?

#88

Post by hi_hi » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 11:18 PM UTC

I’d be interested in a different question. Do those who think Scratch is a bad starting language for kids have kids?

The benefit of kids learning coding isn’t the language or system. It’s about them learning abstract thought and problem solving. It also introduces them to the concepts of variables, loops, etc. If you can do that in an engaging and enjoyable way you’ve won half the battle already.

Re: Has early Scratch experience led to fulfilling careers?

#89

Post by protocolture » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 1:36 AM UTC

matherial wrote: post #68

I 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 electroni…

>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.

Yeah its not exactly predictable.

I know very few people in my high school who even attempted technology careers, and all of them from my year who tried, other than myself and one other, went in with scholarships. And all of them, left when the scholarship money ended. Its literally the 2 of us out of 6, and we are the 2 who werent funded by scholarships.

And one of the blokes who bailed was consistently turning in better quality coding assignments, and also had access to a pre uni IT pathway, and was studying for it. He just got bored and wandered off when no one wanted to finance it anymore (and this is australia, where full time students of that age are already eligible for money)

Re: Has early Scratch experience led to fulfilling careers?

#90

Post by rahimnathwani » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 2:11 AM UTC

codingdave wrote: post #81

I worked with some of the folks who introduced coding into school districts way back when that movement started, so I have a bit of inside knowledge. The biggest anecdote I'd share is that learning to code as early as 1st grade unexpectedly led to children taking the ability to troubleshoot problems and using it across all their subjects in school. They started to treat struggles in other classes as debugging assignm…

"It has led to academic improvements across entire school districts"

This sounds amazing! Is there anything more you can share about this? Or any articles/papers about the results or how you supported kids to progress with Scratch?