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Scratch is a big deal

bryanbraun.com

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Re: Scratch is a big deal

#111

Post by yrandom »

ModernMech wrote: post #21

Scratch is great, but the problem is: where do kids go after scratch? Often they are transitioned directly to professional-grade languages and developer tools, which has the effect of turning what was once fun to something scary and frustrating. Many kids stop their PL development right then and there, writing it off as something “not for me”. I find this sad, as it means a lot of people who might otherwise benefit f…

I agree and it's one of the reasons I built https://akedo.app

It's a text based programming platform centred around creating games and can be used from a young age and into adulthood.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#112

Post by _benj »

urthor wrote: post #69
jms429 wrote: post #55

As a former computing teacher, I loved Scratch. I remember reading about it on a Thursday evening on Slashdot, maybe spring of '08, or 09. I had a free lesson first thing the next day, so I installed it on the network then had a class of 10 year olds give it a whirl. Had a full scheme of work written by the Monday, and was demoing it to other schools by the summer. Loved it, loved the scratch board addon hardware, lo…

If I may ask: Why former?

Not op but maybe compensation and everything else outside of teaching?

I used to teach computers/math to 8th graders and while teaching is beautiful school politics, terrible benefits, dealing with patents, among others things made the job of teaching incredibly difficult and draining

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#113

Post by avgcorrection »

spankalee wrote: post #15

I like Scratch - my kid uses it and I worked briefly with the guy who made Blockly, the underlying visual programming toolkit - but the programming environment makes many things far too complicated with its singular focus on sprites. It's very, very difficult to do things as simple as display a number on screen. My 7yo was making a number guessing game, and to display a two-digit number we had to make two sprites tha…

Displaying a number sounds like some hello world popup exercise that you would do in Rust or Go. I don’t see why one not just jump right to the game-making, which Scratch is good at.

> This made dealing with Scratch far more complex and time-consuming than the logic of the game my kid was making, which is the exact opposite of what you want in a learning environment. I don't really want to focus on the idiosyncrasies of Scratch when teaching programming.

Printing “Hello World” and displaying a number is easy in languages like Java. Making a top-down shooter is not. So why does one usually do the print stuff rather than the top-down shooter stuff? Ain’t that also because of the idiosyncracies of your run of the mill general purpose programming languages?

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#114

Post by solardev »

modernerd wrote: post #56

Is there a reason that visual programming languages haven’t taken off for professional programming? I know of several for specific fields (Dark for backends, TouchDesigner for live graphics/multimedia), but none that are more generalised, open, or in wide use. It feels like an underdeveloped area that’s ripe for exploration and experimentation.

In game dev, Unity for example uses a visual shader programmer: https://unity.com/features/shader-graph

For serverless functions/API pipelines, check out (formerly Integromat): https://www.make.com/en

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#115

Post by enragedcacti »

avgcorrection wrote: post #113
spankalee wrote: post #15

I like Scratch - my kid uses it and I worked briefly with the guy who made Blockly, the underlying visual programming toolkit - but the programming environment makes many things far too complicated with its singular focus on sprites. It's very, very difficult to do things as simple as display a number on screen. My 7yo was making a number guessing game, and to display a two-digit number we had to make two sprites tha…

Displaying a number sounds like some hello world popup exercise that you would do in Rust or Go. I don’t see why one not just jump right to the game-making, which Scratch is good at. > This made dealing with Scratch far more complex and time-consuming than the logic of the game my kid was making, which is the exact opposite of what you want in a learning environment. I don't really want to focus on the idiosyncrasies…

Probably because his kid wanted to make a number guessing game? I feel like the last thing you would want from a children's programming language is "why would you want to do that? Go learn Java if that's the type of thing you want to make"

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#116

Post by anyfactor »

misterdata wrote: post #77

At work we built a BI tool around Scratch (Blockly) back in 2013. It’s still seeing daily use: https://www.dialogic.nl/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/demo1.gif

This is the coolest thing I have seen this week! Is the program open sourced?

I firmly believe Scratch should be taught at university level for business students. We studied C, C++, VB and MS Access. We didn't understand crap, nor the instructors had any interest in teaching that crap.

Scratch is a wonderful tool for any people to dip their toes in programming. And stuff like this makes me double down on this idea. Scratch should be the first thing to be taught to teach programming regardless of education level. BI tool and database interaction is the perfect and practical application of Scratch.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#117

Post by avgcorrection »

enragedcacti wrote: post #115
avgcorrection wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Displaying a number sounds like some hello world popup exercise that you would do in Rust or Go. I don’t see why one not just jump right to the game-making, which Scratch is good at. > This made dealing with Scratch far more complex and time-consuming than the logic of the game my kid was making, which is the exact opposite of what you want in a learning environment. I don't really want to focus on the idiosyncrasies…

Probably because his kid wanted to make a number guessing game? I feel like the last thing you would want from a children's programming language is "why would you want to do that? Go learn Java if that's the type of thing you want to make"

They just said that the kid was making it. Not whose idea it was.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#119

Post by LelouBil »

solardev wrote: post #114
modernerd wrote: post #56

Is there a reason that visual programming languages haven’t taken off for professional programming? I know of several for specific fields (Dark for backends, TouchDesigner for live graphics/multimedia), but none that are more generalised, open, or in wide use. It feels like an underdeveloped area that’s ripe for exploration and experimentation.

In game dev, Unity for example uses a visual shader programmer: https://unity.com/features/shader-graph For serverless functions/API pipelines, check out (formerly Integromat): https://www.make.com/en

A lot or 3D renderers use node-based programming for shaders.

Some even use it for procedural modeling ! (Houdini, Blender)

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#120

Post by jonplackett »

sdenton4 wrote: post #85
jonplackett wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

QBASIC was also my intro to programming. I think in a way it’s a shame that kids now first see visuals rather than code. There’s something much more thrilling about seeing a bunch of written instructions become a game, than some sprites that already look a lot like the game start moving about. Another awesome QBASIC feature - the help section taught you everything you ever needed to know to learn every feature.

Have you tried scratch? The blocks are written programming instructions, with some puzzle piece connectors which help avoid basic syntax errors. These instructions drive the sprites.

I’ve tried it on the iPad. Does it work the same there?

I still think it’s more awesome to see just a written sentence that I typed out become something. Once you introduce any form of barrier between that and output, it’s hard for anyone to know what’s really happening behind the scenes to help you.

There’s a beautiful purity to just simple text becoming something awesome.

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