Scratch is a big deal • Hacker News Board

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#191

Post by hmahncke » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 1:13 AM UTC

A lot of discussion here about the limitations of Scratch as a programming language.

But the magic of Scratch is the community. My daughter learned Scratch, and she joined multiple teams of 10-year olds making all kind of interactive stories and games. And virtually every interaction she had was positive, uplifting, and helped her construct her identity as a programmer.

She now teaches Scratch for kids and programs in Java and Python. But making those friends and doing those team projects was invaluable - and nearly unreplicable in another language/ environment.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#192

Post by pishpash » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 1:16 AM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #102

Sirened wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>7yo was making a number guessing game, and to display a two-digit number we had to make two sprites that had 10 "costumes" (0-9) then do modular math to select the costume for each digit This, imo, is what makes Scratch a great education platform. It has a couple of very easy to use primitives (such as displaying and moving sprites) and leaves you to build whatever else you need by abstracting things on top of it. T…

This is also a good point. Scratch isn't designed to make coding easy so much as conceptually understandable .

That's not it, otherwise you'd make the little ones play with a Turing machine.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#193

Post by ezfe » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 1:19 AM UTC

I used Scratch in middle school, my first exposure to programming. Graduated two years ago and I'm a full time Software Engineer now.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#194

Post by jackbravo » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 1:19 AM UTC

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…

maybe Pharo or Squeak would be better alternatives as a follow up to Scratch?

I think python is also a great candidate.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#195

Post by analog31 » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 1:24 AM UTC

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #144

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.

As someone currently employed to port an absolutely gargantuan (~10,000 vi) LabVIEW project to C#, there are very good reasons to not use visual programming languages. 1. Writing it is a pain. This is a minor gripe, comparably, but if you already know what you want it is very, very hard to beat just typing out a word. Dragging and dropping through menus makes every little action take too long for comfort. You also mi…

I used LabVIEW quite extensively in a past job, and eventually switched to Visual Basic. The stuff I was doing didn't need the performance of LV.

I found graphical programming to be physically debilitating due to eyestrain and wrist fatigue. Granted, this affects each person differently, and I also don't use CAD for the same reason. I can type text with my eyes closed, or while I shift my visual focus away from the screen.

I think a reason why LV programs always seem so unreadable is that the sheer physical effort to clean them up gets the best of the people doing the programming.

A general issue with graphical programming is that you're responsible for the developer interface, and really sweating the details to make it tolerably ergonomic is phenomenally costly in time and effort -- think of how many programmers are employed by Apple or Microsoft.

In contrast, when experimenting with a new or improved text based language, you can piggyback off of existing IDE's or even basic text editors, and get a running head start on adoption by a user community. And the economics are such that languages and IDEs can be supported as open source projects.

There are text based dataflow programming langauges, and I think if LV adopted one of them as an option, folks would stop using the graphical environment after getting over the initial hump of learning to program.

I always show people this:

https://www.ni.com/docs/en-US/bundle/labview/page/gmath/nonl...

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#196

Post by SoftTalker » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 1:33 AM UTC

kazinator wrote: post #62

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…

> My 7yo was making a number guessing game, and to display a two-digit number we had to make two sprites that had 10 "costumes" (0-9) then do modular math to select the costume for each digit So if your kid is cool with this kind of clever workaround for the limitations of some piece of crap, you have a future software engineer.

Or it's a good lesson on knowing when you're using the wrong tool for the job.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#197

Post by space_fountain » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 1:39 AM UTC

pishpash wrote: post #192

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also a good point. Scratch isn't designed to make coding easy so much as conceptually understandable .

That's not it, otherwise you'd make the little ones play with a Turing machine.

Turing machines are about being mathematically tractable right not about understanding right?

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#198

Post by mdwagner » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 1:39 AM UTC

I believe it. Back in college we started out with this visual tool called Raptor and it was a great introduction to programming before diving into more complicated languages like Java. While Raptor was fun, clearly Scratch would have been nicer.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#199

Post by electriclove » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 1:41 AM UTC

hmahncke wrote: post #191

A lot of discussion here about the limitations of Scratch as a programming language. But the magic of Scratch is the community. My daughter learned Scratch, and she joined multiple teams of 10-year olds making all kind of interactive stories and games. And virtually every interaction she had was positive, uplifting, and helped her construct her identity as a programmer. She now teaches Scratch for kids and programs i…

How did she get involved with joining those teams? Is that something she sought out herself? Are there programs that facilitate this?

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#200

Post by pronlover723 » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 1:43 AM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #65

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…

If you’re willing to pay then give gamemaker studio a go. It has a similar logic block based model (you can also progress into a full ECMAscript based language once you get more advanced), but is a lot more flexible about what you can display. Not 100% sure it’s still beginner friendly as I used it over a decade ago, but I’m pretty sure there’s a free trial, so you could find out.

> a full ECMAscript based language

Wat? Really. I thought it just has GML which is one of the shittiest languages I've ever used. It's really and seriously crap. On par with trying to write real programs in sh.