Scratch is a big deal
bryanbraun.com
Scratch is a big deal
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Re: Scratch is a big deal
#2One of my earliest memories of writing code was playing Gorillas, a QBASIC game, on my school's PC in the early 90s. My friends and I would tweak the source code to make the gravity stronger or weaker, or make other interesting mods to the projectiles.
For me, it was a perfect introduction, because there was an already written, already playable program, and I could dive into the code little by little and explore.
Scratch is very similar. My kids love to play games on Scratch, but they also enjoy taking a look under the hood to see if there's something simple they can modify.
Re: Scratch is a big deal
#3One of my earliest memories of writing code was playing Gorillas, a QBASIC game, on my school's PC in the early 90s. My friends and I would tweak the source code to make the gravity stronger or weaker, or make other interesting mods to the projectiles. For me, it was a perfect introduction, because there was an already written, already playable program, and I could dive into the code little by little and explore. Scr…
This is something that I think is extremely under-appreciated: the ability of a user to dive into the code of what they’re using and try things out. Like the type-in games of the 8-bit micro era, or like Scratch, or like Emacs; each of these allows the user to tinker with little overhead.
Modern software, by contrast, is usually too opaque - even free software! The barrier to entry is way too high.
Re: Scratch is a big deal
#4From a quick look it doesn't seem that the graphical elements are inherent to the language. It could be expressed in a text syntax, and with more or less difficultly other languages could get a similar graphical overlay.
If the graphics are useful training wheels to new programmers of scratch, the same is probably true for the text languages. And from time to time even a super cyclist can find a use for training wheels.
For one thing, a language expressed in a common graphical form could help communicate with non-coder domain experts, quality assurance teams, customers, etc. This is kind of an argument to publish the latin bible in the vulgar argot, less exclusive to the priesthood.
Re: Scratch is a big deal
#5One of my earliest memories of writing code was playing Gorillas, a QBASIC game, on my school's PC in the early 90s. My friends and I would tweak the source code to make the gravity stronger or weaker, or make other interesting mods to the projectiles. For me, it was a perfect introduction, because there was an already written, already playable program, and I could dive into the code little by little and explore. Scr…
Can you share some here? I’m about to get my 3 year old into Scratch, since it’s already on his RPi.
I remember doing the exact same thing in grade school with Gorillas and QBASIC. I actually want to download it now and play it again.
Re: Scratch is a big deal
#6This is extremely heartening. I can’t wait for the day we get popular Smalltalk apps that users can easily inspect and modify! Seems like it’s actually a great platform on which to bootstrap a free software ecosystem more effective (for remixing) than GitHub.
Re: Scratch is a big deal
#7From a quick look it doesn't seem that the graphical elements are inherent to the language. It could be expressed in a text syntax, and with more or less difficultly other languages could get a similar graphical overlay. If the graphics are useful training wheels to new programmers of scratch, the same is probably true for the text languages. And from time to time even a super cyclist can find a use for training whee…
> It could be expressed in a text syntax, and with more or less difficultly, other languages could get a similar graphical overlay.
Yeah, Makecode Arcade has a similar UI with mappings to and from both Python and Javascript.
Re: Scratch is a big deal
#8FYI There is a free online Scratch Conference July 21, 2022
Re: Scratch is a big deal
#9From a quick look it doesn't seem that the graphical elements are inherent to the language. It could be expressed in a text syntax, and with more or less difficultly other languages could get a similar graphical overlay. If the graphics are useful training wheels to new programmers of scratch, the same is probably true for the text languages. And from time to time even a super cyclist can find a use for training whee…
In undergrad I worked with this group for a while: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/andru/papers/reduct-chi17/
They took the basic idea of Scratch, then made it into more of a game with levels, each level being a puzzle to (implicitly) teach or test programming concepts. As you progressed it'd introduce new syntax, while slowly "fading" more familiar syntax towards actual JavaScript code (though retaining the block/GUI-based interface).
We did some more work on further iterations but I'm not sure what became of it all.
Re: Scratch is a big deal
#10From a quick look it doesn't seem that the graphical elements are inherent to the language. It could be expressed in a text syntax, and with more or less difficultly other languages could get a similar graphical overlay. If the graphics are useful training wheels to new programmers of scratch, the same is probably true for the text languages. And from time to time even a super cyclist can find a use for training whee…
Resnick and co were very structured and evidence lead with the graphical design; nothing in the visual language is accidental. The structure of the language is also very carefully designed in conjunction with the graphical mechanisms.