theonlygusti wrote:

How's forum activity since the button was removed form the homepage?

I'd like to recommend the forums to a beginner programmer as a place to ask questions, but if no one's around to answer them that's pointless.

orochi67 wrote:

theonlygusti wrote:

How's forum activity since the button was removed form the homepage?

I'd like to recommend the forums to a beginner programmer as a place to ask questions, but if no one's around to answer them that's pointless.

1 - I don't think this is really the place for this type of question.
2 - The forums aren't dead. The forum link was just moved to the bar… thingy… under the URL… thingy… I really don't know what it's called. .-.

theonlygusti wrote:

How's forum activity since the button was removed form the homepage?

I'd like to recommend the forums to a beginner programmer as a place to ask questions, but if no one's around to answer them that's pointless.

frodewin wrote:

theonlygusti wrote:

How's forum activity since the button was removed form the homepage?

I'd like to recommend the forums to a beginner programmer as a place to ask questions, but if no one's around to answer them that's pointless.

The moving of the discuss button into the footer was definitely a setback (so was the removing of the forum search function) but I would not call it the final nail in the coffin.

On the positive side, there are announcements on the front page about video announcements and Wiki Wednesday, which link to the forum.

I would definitely recommend to spread the word and show other Scratchers the forum, once somebody finds this place, it still offers a lot to somebody who has questions about programming. Only the Show & Tell forum is a write-only memory. :-)

cum potestate magna venit magnus responsabilitate

pick random (0) to (pick random (50) to (100):: operators)::operators

pick random (0) to (100)

-_Ponies4Ever_- wrote:

I'm sorry if I'm posting it in the wrong place, but it's useless posting it somewhere else, no one answers me on other topics. Is the block

pick random (0) to (pick random (50) to (100):: operators)::operators

the same as

pick random (0) to (100)

? Plz answer

(pick random (0) to (100))

pick random (0) to (pick random (50) to (100):: operators)::operators

1/101 * 1/51 = 1/5151

1/101 * 1 = 1/101 (this is LESS than the real answer, though)

• You can pick the same range of numbers using both blocks
  
• However, the nested block makes some numbers more likely to appear than others
  

jokebookservice1 wrote:

-_Ponies4Ever_- wrote:

I'm sorry if I'm posting it in the wrong place, but it's useless posting it somewhere else, no one answers me on other topics. Is the block

pick random (0) to (pick random (50) to (100):: operators)::operators

the same as

pick random (0) to (100)

? Plz answer

Wow, that's a really good question!

If we assume that

(pick random (0) to (100))

Will pick each value with a 1/101 chance, then let's take a look at the chance of getting “100” using the below code is.

pick random (0) to (pick random (50) to (100):: operators)::operators

For that to happen, you'd need to have a “100” appear in the pick_random(50, 100). The chance of that happening is 1/51. Then you need to get a 1/101 chance of that happening.

1/101 * 1/51 = 1/5151

Now let's take a look at any number between 0 and 50. Let's say “30”. We don't actually need the pick_random(50, 100) block to do anything special. Now, let's try and get a lower bound on the probability of this. It's going to be no less than the probability when pick_random(50, 100) has a result of 100. Of course, sometimes it'll be less than 100, but that just makes “30” more likely. When it is 100, the chance of picking any number (i.e. 30) is just the chance of picking 30, which is 1/101

1/101 * 1 = 1/101 (this is LESS than the real answer, though)

Already we can see that “30” is more likely than “100”, even though we don't know just how likely “30” is.

So to answer your question

• You can pick the same range of numbers using both blocks
  
• However, the nested block makes some numbers more likely to appear than others
  

gtoal wrote:

Speaking personally, I would do projects because interesting people would discuss interesting ideas in forums such as this one and it would sometimes inspire me to try out some idea in code to see if it was feasible. Ever since the forums dried up, my interest in coding for this site has waned too. I think de-emphasising the forums was a serious mistake on the part of the powers that be. I still check in once every few weeks to see if anything interesting is happening but there never is.

badatprogrammingibe wrote:

gtoal wrote:

Speaking personally, I would do projects because interesting people would discuss interesting ideas in forums such as this one and it would sometimes inspire me to try out some idea in code to see if it was feasible. Ever since the forums dried up, my interest in coding for this site has waned too. I think de-emphasising the forums was a serious mistake on the part of the powers that be. I still check in once every few weeks to see if anything interesting is happening but there never is.

The scratch team doesn't really care about advanced scratchers.

CosmicBunBun wrote:

Scratch has recently made some awful design changes with 3.0 and the current website (who's going to click on Tips, seriously) so this is more of a clubhouse now than anything, and I'm pretty sure logically adding the Discuss button back to the header has been rejected because what is 5 minutes of replacing a hyperlink or shortening a search bar.

gtoal wrote:

Speaking personally, I would do projects because interesting people would discuss interesting ideas in forums such as this one and it would sometimes inspire me to try out some idea in code to see if it was feasible. Ever since the forums dried up, my interest in coding for this site has waned too. I think de-emphasising the forums was a serious mistake on the part of the powers that be. I still check in once every few weeks to see if anything interesting is happening but there never is.

novice27b wrote:

gtoal wrote:

Speaking personally, I would do projects because interesting people would discuss interesting ideas in forums such as this one and it would sometimes inspire me to try out some idea in code to see if it was feasible. Ever since the forums dried up, my interest in coding for this site has waned too. I think de-emphasising the forums was a serious mistake on the part of the powers that be. I still check in once every few weeks to see if anything interesting is happening but there never is.

Yup, this is pretty much how I feel.

I've been here for the best part of a decade now (wow, I'm old I guess?), and things have definitely got quieter around here since “The Change”. Scratch still means a lot to me, and it's really sad to see it fade away.

That said, the level of engagement I get on Scratch is still *way* above the level I'd get, if for example I'd posted the same code to GitHub.

Ultimately, I think that's motivated me to work harder on my personal projects - Something worthy of the HN front page requires a lot more work than the Scratch front page. I've only really been skilled enough to get decent engagement on other platforms for the last couple years, and I think Scratch as a platform really helped to keep me motivated until I reached that point. If engagement on Scratch was lower, maybe I would never have reached it.

IMHO, Scratch still fulfils its primary purpose of getting kids into programming and computational thinking. However, I think Scratch also needs to think about The Next Step for its users, and taking away the link to the forums shows that isn't much of a priority at all.