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Scratch is a big deal

bryanbraun.com

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Re: Scratch is a big deal

#91

Post by Snild »

system16 wrote: post #35

Having already known how to code, I gave Scratch a shot after hearing about it. I know I'm not the target audience, but despite "looking" friendly I found it very complex and not very intuitive at all. If the goal is to ultimately learn programming with industry standard tools, I think the time would be better spent learning those tools and fundamentals rather than becoming comfortable with Scratch and trying to tran…

It is definitely a hard switch to make when you're used to being able to just _write_ what you want, rather than having to go look for the block and drag it into place. :)

> If the goal is to ultimately learn programming with industry standard tools

It has variables, if, else, different kinds of loops, event handlers... Of course it still isn't "real" programming, but it does teach some basic concepts of it, while still being relatively easy for a child to use.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#92

Post by bredren »

_int3_ wrote: post #39
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…

That's what I did also. I made explosions in Gorillas as I wanted them . I didn't know coding or language but somehow figured out if I change values here and there the explosion would be bigger. Soon after that wrote program for deleting other programs. actually useful because we didn't know yet how to delete from DOS. we were kids left with PC with no instructions at all. Parents were busy. Now in hindsight I see my…

I too edited gorillas as one of my first programming endeavors.

As for the other thing, there was some DOS command I learned that forced an immediate reboot. I realized this could be added to the end of an autoexec.bat and create an endless reboot loop.

Well, I thought this was a funny prank so I edited the file on a display PC at Costco. Came back by it later in the trip and it’s still booting and rebooting.

I look back on that and realize it probably had to be replaced and sent to some other state where some tech either had to troubleshoot it or create a new image all together.

Not the best use of value but it was amusing to exert power over computers at such an early age.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#94

Post by shadowgovt »

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.

Speed and scalability. Both problems are solvable, and I haven't seen anybody putting the investment to solve it in a grand scale on a popular, open source visual programming language.

For speed: it's really hard to beat the speed of data entry via keyboard. A well-designed set of keyboard accelerators would cover a lot of ground on making visual programming languages comparable to keyboard programming speed, but I haven't seen anybody pull it off yet.

For scalability, and in the sense I mean scalability of project complexity from a toy desktop project to a distributed system deployment or a low level embedded system: the vast bulk of tools that are available for supporting large projects are built around text and the fact that it's relatively easy to translate a tool working in one text-based language to another text-based language. Git doesn't care what language you're using; it's all text. Diffing tools don't care what language you're using; they diff lines of text. As tools like Copilot grow, they will start by disproportionately giving a power boost to text-based languages because they are built to work with text-based languages.

Anything that's going to work with a visual programming language in a way that is as robust as these tools do needs to treat the language as an abstract syntax tree, not a collection of lines separated by line breaks. And the tools to do that are going to have to be written almost from scratch; it's simply an underdeveloped ecosystem because there's so much fungibility between different text-based languages in terms of allowing tools that work on one to work on another.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#95

Post by BrandoElFollito »

tartoran wrote: post #89
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #78

My children did not like scratch (it is taught at school in France). They had much less problems to understand Python which seems more natural in the interactions (displaying things, especially). They are unfortunately not interested in programming but when they have to do something at school they catch up with Python quickly. With scratch not that much.

Python is a bit more advanced in the sense that it’s a more general purpose and you have to know how to type on the keyboard well enough. I started with basic and logo back in the 80s but if scratch were a thing back then I’d have probably benefitted from it quite a bit. I see scratch as a first ramp into programming for tots and am glad it exists but also hope it won’t become a thing to handicap adoption of other pr…

I did not mention that my children were early teenagers when they had scratch at school.

I also started with BASIC in the 80's and scratch would probably have helped with some general concepts, especially loops and variables. But in my experience (of two data points :)) it is quickly left on the side for more effective languages (more effective because they can be typed and easily moved around, copied etc.). Vscode hints also help a lot.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#96

Post by tokamak-teapot »

system16 wrote: post #35

Having already known how to code, I gave Scratch a shot after hearing about it. I know I'm not the target audience, but despite "looking" friendly I found it very complex and not very intuitive at all. If the goal is to ultimately learn programming with industry standard tools, I think the time would be better spent learning those tools and fundamentals rather than becoming comfortable with Scratch and trying to tran…

I found the same. Then I watched kids using it by following instruction sheets, picking up the concepts, tweaking, making their own projects, and moving on to Python.

I got to understand Scratch by learning how kids use it. It’s just a mindset and expectation shift that is similar to that I experience when learning anything new. When I first learned a proper functional language after years of imperative. When I used a game dev environment that does lots for you.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#97

Post by tartoran »

HorizonXP wrote: post #5
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…

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.

I have a 4 year old and I find that he’s not ready to be exposed to computers let alone programming languages yet. There are so many things to learn at that age that sitting in front of a screen for too long may be a disadvantage. Im thinking a starting age is more like 6-8, of course depending on other factors as well. I find that 3-4 may be a good time to start reading though

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#98

Post by fillskills »

Retr0id wrote: post #60

A fun statistic is that Scratch now has over 100 million projects published by users on their website[1]. GitHub only reached 100m repos in 2018[2] - I can't find any more up-to-date numbers, but it's probably around 150m today. It's crazy to think that Scratch and GitHub operate on similar orders of magnitude. [1] https://scratch.mit.edu/statistics/ [2] https://github.blog/2018-11-08-100m-repos/

Maybe one of the reasons for sudden increase in the projects are companies such as Whitehat Jr. Whitehat incorporates and leverages Scratch in their lesson plans. For each lesson kids may be creating 1-3 Scratch programs. You can read more about Whitehat Jr, their approach to sales etc by doing a little googling. And am sure there are other companies who follow the same practice of leveraging Scratch in tutorials. (edit) Not condoning this, just adding more information.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#99

Post by icedata »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #61
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.

I teach Scratch to kids professionally. I love it as a learning tool, but when I need to actually write Scratch code myself for whatever reason, I find the experience pretty aggravating. Finding the block I need from the big list and dragging it into place takes a lot more time than just typing the command. Scratch programs also become messy quickly as the complexity increases. Normal code is more compact and easier…

We tried it the other way. I worked for a decade at Logo Computer Systems, where the principal designer of Scratch used to work. Eventually schools tired of teaching kids text-based coding.

Re: Scratch is a big deal

#100

Post by sva_ »

I have to say that I used this back in school many years ago, and I absolutely hated it. But I realize that other people might feel different about it.

I much preferred just being able to write text characters, I felt like it gave me a lot more freedom in what I can achieve, but also how I achieve those things.

I might be an outlier in that though.

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