Scratch is a big deal • Hacker News Board

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#201

Post by bryanbraun » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 1:45 AM UTC

herf wrote: post #105

I love what they've done and how my kids have taken to it. The combination of design tools and code reminds me of the "golden age" of Flash in some ways. Vector graphics editor, sound editor, code, it all works together - this is pretty special to see in one tool that kids can use. The games are actually getting quite good on the platform, and that means it's hard for a lot of parents to understand how much time is g…

I've never made the Flash connection but I totally agree.

On my end, I try not to worry too much on the gaming vs coding thing. I'd rather have my kids playing games on Scratch then some other place where they can't view source.

I figure, if they have some basic skills and know what's possible, they'll eventually get curious and poke around. I think that's more true for some kids then others though (even in my own house).

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#202

Post by jecel » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 1:53 AM UTC

It is great that Scratch can be used as an introduction to programming, but that is not why it was created. It was part of the MIT MediaLab "Computer Clubhouse"[1] project where it would be used to enable a remix culture of cute animations and even simple games. Scratch's implementer, John Maloney, had already helped create a programming environment for kids called EToys[2] using Squeak Smalltalk, just as in the first versions of Scratch (later rewritten in Flash and then in Javascript).

So the comments about how it is hard to do in Scratch something that would be trivial in Basic or some other language are not surprising. It is an animation system that allows you to use programming to increment that.

As others have pointed out, a system with the same visual as Scratch but design for actually programming is Snap![3] so it is just a matter of using the tools for what they were created to do.

[1] https://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/papers/Clubhouse/Clubhouse.h...

[2] http://squeakland.org/

[3] https://snap.berkeley.edu/

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#203

Post by unixhero » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 1:55 AM UTC

For teaching kids (school classes) to code, I have had better success with https://www.codecombat.com than MIT Scratch.

Kids had more fun than with scratch and learnt programming actual language.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#204

Post by user3939382 » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 2:12 AM UTC

I discovered the existence of, and taught myself, BASIC on my Apple IIc when I was about 8. My first program was an implementation of Mad Libs. Surely we could just take that concept and make it even easier for kids.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#205

Post by mbrodersen » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 2:23 AM UTC

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…

Look I was teaching myself Z80 machine code on a ZX-Spectrum when I was 11. No internet to help me out and nobody I knew could help me. Just one book. And yet I learned how to hand compile Z80 assembler to machine code and make fun little games. So don’t underestimate the capabilities of kids to solve hard problems :)

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#206

Post by lupire » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 2:24 AM UTC

jecel wrote: post #202

It is great that Scratch can be used as an introduction to programming, but that is not why it was created. It was part of the MIT MediaLab "Computer Clubhouse"[1] project where it would be used to enable a remix culture of cute animations and even simple games. Scratch's implementer, John Maloney, had already helped create a programming environment for kids called EToys[2] using Squeak Smalltalk, just as in the firs…

No post body was provided.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#207

Post by AndrewKemendo » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 2:29 AM UTC

I search for anything I can to figure out what is happening with the Scratch community because my daughter, who has been a scratch user for 6 years has, over the last two been on there almost exclusively for the "community."

It's super cool to see other kids remix her works and she to do the same.

The one complaint I have is that we have run into one creep who was soliciting kids' info, however it was only one time and he disappeared pretty quickly.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#208

Post by tmaly » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 2:55 AM UTC

Sirened wrote: post #67

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…

>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…

I just think there are so many other forms of distraction today. Young kids are carrying around cell phones, texting their friends. It’s that or they are doing something on Tiktok.

They don’t have time to hack like that anymore.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#209

Post by tayloramurphy » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 2:55 AM UTC

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 genuinely amazing - I'd love to give it a try. Any chance any of the work your team put into it is open source?

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#210

Post by tmaly » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 3:01 AM UTC

yCombLinks wrote: post #73

falcor84 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's very, very difficult to do things as simple as display a number on screen. I suppose I might be missing something, but if you just care about displaying the number, rather than any particular styling, you can just show the variable, right?

Show the variable how? There's not a console, there's not a way to simply display a string or character. Scratch revolves around programming sprites to do things

You could also display it with a say or think block.