I teach kids to code on a volunteer basis. Although Scratch is very good, the kids usually gets lost. Even when we print out the solution for them to follow. When they don't get lost, it seems they are not having as much fun.<p>My experience is that it is literally 10 times more fun for the kids to learn to code Python with <a href="http://www.codecombat.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.codecombat.com</a> . The classes gets filled with excitement when I put on the 10 hour version of "Diablo Town Music" and tell them to log into Codecombat. Very rewarding actually :). I register free accounts and bring these to my classes on a printed sheet, that works great. As such I don't need to pay for the classroom edition. I have actually let Cidecbat know about this pricing flaw, but no new models have been introduced
that fit my use case has been
made available. This is Codecombat does not have a pricing tier that fits my volunteering classes with random participants well.
Scratch is pretty great, and at least 3 of my kids constantly ask if they can play Scratch. Unfortunately, for 2 of them it usually means just putting characters on a stage and adding code to change their costumes when you click the green button.<p>But if you have kids who want to step up their game from Scratch, check out PICO-8 (submitted it earlier today, check my history). It's genuinely amazing, and my oldest absolutely loves using it. He's made some awesome 2d games so far over winter break and he's using legitimate programming concepts and techniques like they're nothing, it's really amazing to watch.
I just discovered this amazing classic demo by Margaret Minsky from Atari Cambridge Research Labs, demonstrating a gestural programming system with a button box for programming with a pressure sensitive touch screen, developed by Margaret Minsky, Danny Hillis, Daniel Huttenlocher, David Wallace (Gumby), and Radia Perlman at the MIT-AI Lab.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Wq6SQTVM9M" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Wq6SQTVM9M</a><p>This is one of many amazing videos from Cynthia Solomon's treasure trove of youtube uploads.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/cynthiaso/videos" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/user/cynthiaso/videos</a><p>If you act now, you can be the 32nd person to watch this video of Seymour Papert demonstrate the Logo Turtle! ;)<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDyym_9-E-g" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDyym_9-E-g</a><p>Or be the 39th person to watch this video of Seymour Papert explaining how giraffes sleep:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha8sTgtUejM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha8sTgtUejM</a>
> Scratch Desktop on Linux is currently not supported. We are working with partners and the open-source community to determine if there is a way we can support Linux in the future. Stay tuned!<p>Apparently from version 3.0 Scratch is proprietary and doesn't run offline on free operating systems[0]. That's just sad. There are some good ideas in Scratch, but I think <i>Snap!</i>[1] is the better one to use: It's free, and you can create your own (recursive) blocks[2].<p>[0]: <a href="https://scratch.mit.edu/download" rel="nofollow">https://scratch.mit.edu/download</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://snap.berkeley.edu/" rel="nofollow">https://snap.berkeley.edu/</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXN81Hsj_A4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXN81Hsj_A4</a>
I started programming with Scratch 1.2 back in 2007. I'm now a computer science major in college, so I'm glad to see the Scratch team at MIT continuing to make great progress. Scratch (and similar programming environments) is a very successful way to introduce children to programming and I hope that it continues to do so.
It would be cool if something evolved from Scratch to become a modern Visual Basic, something not just for learning and play; that went mainstream for the masses. imo the biggest problem with most programming languages is user uncertainty of constraints. It has parallels with GUIs vs command lines. Command lines have no visual constraints with what you could type. i.e. the user doesn't know what they can and can't type. The GUI on the other hand shows everything that a user can do visually. It has constraints. There are only so many buttons and menu items. It helps limit fear and confusion. While IDEs do help bridge this gap, they only go so far for people who aren't as motivated as programmers. It would be nice to have a programming language with this feature (I know they already exist) to go mainstream.
I taught kids programming in an after school program for 4 years. Scratch was the tool that explained a lot of concepts best (and allowed those students who had trouble, still feel like they achieved something meaningful in the course)<p>I took a look around and saw some nice improvements to areas where Scratch always seemed crufty! Plus it loaded fine in every browser I tried!<p>That's a great update and I can't wait to see what the extensions are like
I teach kids from 6 to 12 years with Scratch (and other tools) in my spare time. If you are a developer you should try it out. It's amazing how creative kids are with a tool like Scratch. My programming career started with Flash 4 and allowed me to work with sound, audio and animations together with the possibility to program and to easily distribute it (there was a single swf file).<p>Scratch is like the distilled version of it optimized for kids. I would have loved it as a kid and I see how natural children can work with it. Mitchel Resnick and his team did a great job with Scratch and it's amazing to finally see it working in HTML5 - after being a Flash based application.<p>Teaching coding to kids is important and as a developer it's easy to say so. Some day I made the decision to think about the why to better explain people why I do the teaching. The end product was a 25min talk I gave at the JSConf EU 2018 in Berlin. Maybe that's of interest for parents reading here about Scratch and of course fellow developers interested in teaching coding to kids.<p><a href="https://youtu.be/t0m5rrKKMOA" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/t0m5rrKKMOA</a> (<i>About Coding Kids and Screaming Carrots — JSConf EU 2018</i>)<p>Here the slides and all information I mentioned in the talk:
<a href="https://github.com/georgiee/coding-for-kids" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/georgiee/coding-for-kids</a><p>My summary why a kid should learn coding:<p><pre><code> > It's about teaching kids to be producer instead of a consumer
> so they can build their own games, tell their own stories
> and create their own music.</code></pre>
If you are looking for the "next step" after scratch for teaching kids how to code, I recommend:<p><a href="https://www.robomindacademy.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.robomindacademy.com/</a><p>It's a text based language, but you program a graphical robot to do various tasks. I've found that it's a great combination of fun and actual coding that helps kids transition from something like scratch to more advanced languages and concepts. I'd say it's good for kids around 12 years old.
Scratch also has a friendly, supportive community. Kids engaging in civil discussions, and building off other's ideas.<p>Lots of idea sharing, because you can click to see the "code" inside anyone's project.<p>Scratch 3 is a major re-write, to eliminate Adobe Flash. It also has extensions (the example given is to integrate with Google translate and Lego Mindstorms).
I've been playing around with the beta for a while, it is really impressive, and my 8 year old loves it. I also got a microbit which you can bridge into the scratch environment with their official plugin<p>just for peoples interest, their github is <a href="https://github.com/LLK/" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/LLK/</a><p>The new 3.0 GUI is done with react.
I'll always prefer Snap because it has so many features that allow teaching best practice, but Scratch sets the benchmark so I'm pleased to see its evolution continue — and hopefully some of it will make its way into Snap and other Scratch clones.
I have been teaching my 5 year old daughter Scratch 3 since it was in beta. I am slowly writing some tutorials for other parents as I have been asked how they could teach their kids how to program. I am looking forward to some of the new features that should come with this official release
If you like Scratch you will love Alice 3D: <a href="https://www.alice.org" rel="nofollow">https://www.alice.org</a><p>And for younger kids Scratch Jr. is great <a href="https://www.scratchjr.org" rel="nofollow">https://www.scratchjr.org</a>
I started my son on Scratch when he was 6. He is now 9 and runs a lunchtime coding club at his school teaching other kids to use Scratch. I have looked around for the next step for him to improve his skills and found that Lua Löve to be the best one.
Hopefully this solves some core problems like being able to use it smoothy on multiple platforms outside the browser.<p>I've found previous version of Scratch to be frustratingly limited unfortunately.<p>I don't mind, and expect, kids software to be limited but Scratch makes it really hard to do certain things. It's a pity because it holds the number one place in market positioning for free software for educating kids on how to program.
Funny, I started out impressed to find, unlike in so many announcements of its kind, a prominent "What is Scratch 3.0?" heading, I guessed for those of us who have not been tracking Scratch from its inception.<p>What I found there was, basically, "This is version 3 of Scratch", i.e. completely uninformative to anyone wondering what in blinkered hell Scratch is, who it's for, what it's for, or why I should care that there are now three of it. "Scratch" is a traditional epithet of Satan. So, guessing a Satan animation for kids?<p>I guess they will have a chance to do better if they last to 4.0.
I can't stop wondering if Scratch's visual block approach could be extended/modified to fit real-world programming tasks efficiently. This can be especially valuable to let people code on smartphones.
I can't open the link, but from the main scratch site there is an example sketch celebrating the new version, and I see a lot of complaints in the comments about this breaking existing projects:<p><a href="https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/276660763/" rel="nofollow">https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/276660763/</a><p>I hope that that is just due to a misunderstanding by the users (trying to load a 2.0 sketch in 3.0 or something), and not a sign of badly handling the upgrade?
Web archive link (because the site seems to have been slashdotted): <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20190102213301/https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/326861/" rel="nofollow">http://web.archive.org/web/20190102213301/https://scratch.mi...</a>
If you are encountering a server error, you can check out the wiki: <a href="https://en.scratch-wiki.info/wiki/Scratch_3.0" rel="nofollow">https://en.scratch-wiki.info/wiki/Scratch_3.0</a>
Going to that link, AntiMalwarebytes reports it blocked 2 urls because "spyware" and "trojan" respectively.<p>both from a site called "cubeupload"