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Scratch is a big deal

bryanbraun.com

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Re: Scratch is a big deal

#41

Post by itronitron »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #31

The annual variation shown in the graph immediately says tells me that a large portion of use is driven by academic forces. That can be a problem, but can also be an opportunity. If the institutions driving Scratch adoption decide to switch away from Scratch, the community will be on much more unstable foundations. The opportunity here is finding non-education modes of engagement. Social engagements, viral engagement…

There is an integrated Minecraft 'Scratch' code editor now (https://minecraft.makecode.com/#editor) although that is probably targeting middle-schoolers. In my experience most teenagers coding for MC (not driven by academic forces) are just using Java directly.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#42

Post by easrng »

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…

For the editing and duplicating stuff, keep in mind you can drag blocks into other sprites.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#43

Post by jameshart »

sgt101 wrote: post #10
hirundo wrote: post #4

From 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.

There's a common fallacy that the technically minded are prone to, of assuming that since two different things are 'essentially' the same, the differences between them are superficial and unimportant.

So, for. example, since Scratch. and a text-based language with similar structures (Python, say), are 'essentially' the same, the graphical elements. of Scratch are just sugar, or fluff, and should be ignored.

It's the same mindset that says since anybody can get an FTP account, mount it locally with curlftpfs, and then use SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem to version control it, there's no need for such a thing as DropBox.

Advice for the terminally reductionist-minded: Maybe the things that make Scratch different from Python are actually the most interesting thing about Scratch.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#44

Post by gnramires »

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…

> Scratch is great, but the problem is: where do kids go after scratch?

Good question, I personally think p5.js is a great option. JS is very flexible, and the live environment (at editor.p5js.org) is I suppose very similar to scratch. Drawing elements like squares and circles is as simple as square(), circle(), etc. (with parameters). It's very easy to share an publish (could be on github[1], or just link directly from the editor!). Highly recommended for beginners and any quick interactive work really.

It would be great to have a community page like Scratch though.

[1] See a little procedural tree: https://gustavo-nramires.github.io/ :)

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#45

Post by bckr »

whimsicalism wrote: post #28
ryukafalz wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Much of my coding was started with modifying the Minecraft & Wii internals and I would call that "modern software."

You're an outlier for sure. Wii internals sounds very hard.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#46

Post by zozbot234 »

ManuelKiessling wrote: post #37

I never find the time to dive into it, but for years I carry the thought that somewhere in the general direction of “take the visual programming module of Scratch and make it talk to a cleanly designed high-level API of our business application” lies the key for tremendous feature development productivity, at least for some kinds of features — where from then on, our Product Managers simply go like “oh I know, let’s…

The visual block design of Scratch could be directly applied to any programming language AST. And the programming model involving independent "characters" each running its own logic could translate directly to a model of distributed systems.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#47

Post by easrng »

ManuelKiessling wrote: post #37

I never find the time to dive into it, but for years I carry the thought that somewhere in the general direction of “take the visual programming module of Scratch and make it talk to a cleanly designed high-level API of our business application” lies the key for tremendous feature development productivity, at least for some kinds of features — where from then on, our Product Managers simply go like “oh I know, let’s…

You can use Blockly (Scratch uses a fork of it for the block editor) to do that.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#48

Post by timbit42 »

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…

Perhaps SNAP!

https://snap.berkeley.edu/

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#49

Post by wl »

pipeline_peak wrote: post #16

I have yet to see a visual programming language that looks any easier than something like JS or Python, Scratch is no exception. I still think Scratch’s interactive environment is impressive.

LabVIEW and Simulink are pretty easy if your problem makes sense as data flow.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#50

Post by zozbot234 »

jonplackett wrote: post #38
jawns wrote: post #2

One 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…

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.

I assume that Scratch is more accessible to very young kids, who may have trouble with the ergonomics of correctly inputing text. Also, the whole "drag and drop" workflow can potentially be better suited to modern touch-based devices.
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