Discuss Scratch
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- card100
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Scratcher
1000+ posts
Scratch has a marketing problem
I agree with all this “Power-puff Girls” stuff. This site says 8+. Scratch needs to appeal to 10+ kids. Literally, the only reason my friends are the only ones who don't laugh at me when I open Scratch is because I showed them Griffpatch. That's it. Everyone else snickers. I don't care though.
It does prove a point. Scratch is what set me up to being the computer geek in my school. But when you scare everyone away with cute cartoons from cartoon network or where is the Scratch cat exploring? it gets the wrong point across.
I am really trying to push “Advanced Scratch” on people. Also, the Advanced topics are full of stuff that if you don't know JS or Python you're lost instantly.
That's my rant.
Thanks for sharing the article.
It does prove a point. Scratch is what set me up to being the computer geek in my school. But when you scare everyone away with cute cartoons from cartoon network or where is the Scratch cat exploring? it gets the wrong point across.
I am really trying to push “Advanced Scratch” on people. Also, the Advanced topics are full of stuff that if you don't know JS or Python you're lost instantly.
That's my rant.
Thanks for sharing the article.
-card100
- MegaApuTurkUltra
-
Scratcher
1000+ posts
Scratch has a marketing problem
I agree with all this “Power-puff Girls” stuff. This site says 8+. Scratch needs to appeal to 10+ kids. Literally, the only reason my friends are the only ones who don't laugh at me when I open Scratch is because I showed them Griffpatch. That's it. Everyone else snickers. I don't care though.
It does prove a point. Scratch is what set me up to being the computer geek in my school. But when you scare everyone away with cute cartoons from cartoon network or where is the Scratch cat exploring? it gets the wrong point across.
I am really trying to push “Advanced Scratch” on people. Also, the Advanced topics are full of stuff that if you don't know JS or Python you're lost instantly.
That's my rant.
Thanks for sharing the article.
Snap!
$(".box-head")[0].textContent = "committing AT crimes since $whenever"
- Magnie
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Scratcher
100+ posts
Scratch has a marketing problem
This article just barely appeared in my news feed on SlashDot:
I agree with the article. Back in Scratch 1.3 I wanted to play around with networking. So I learned about Scratch's Remote Sensor Connections and then built a chat program by creating two servers in Python. The first was to host the actual chat server, the second was a proxy that connected to Scratch and then to my chat server. This allowed normal RSC packets to be passed to an external server. Eventually Scratch 1.4 came out and I had Scratcher enable Mesh so they could connect to my server directly without having to download a program. But I had figured out a way around Scratch's “lack” of networking capabilities.
This Computer Language Is Feeding Hacker Values into Young Minds
At 10, Scratch is a popular tool to teach kids programming. But its real glory is how it imparts lessons in sharing, logic, and hackerism.
https://backchannel.com/the-kids-computer-language-that-became-a-mind-bomb-for-the-hacker-ethic-a0b7e42c229d
I agree with the article. Back in Scratch 1.3 I wanted to play around with networking. So I learned about Scratch's Remote Sensor Connections and then built a chat program by creating two servers in Python. The first was to host the actual chat server, the second was a proxy that connected to Scratch and then to my chat server. This allowed normal RSC packets to be passed to an external server. Eventually Scratch 1.4 came out and I had Scratcher enable Mesh so they could connect to my server directly without having to download a program. But I had figured out a way around Scratch's “lack” of networking capabilities.
▴ ▾ ▴ Macbook Pro 13" 2015 i5-5257U 8GB RAM - MacOS Sierra - Vivaldi v1.7 ▴ ▾ ▴
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary, those who don't, and those who know ternary.
- bobbybee
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Scratcher
1000+ posts
Scratch has a marketing problem
This article just barely appeared in my news feed on SlashDot:Back in the good ol' days :pThis Computer Language Is Feeding Hacker Values into Young Minds
At 10, Scratch is a popular tool to teach kids programming. But its real glory is how it imparts lessons in sharing, logic, and hackerism.
https://backchannel.com/the-kids-computer-language-that-became-a-mind-bomb-for-the-hacker-ethic-a0b7e42c229d
I agree with the article. Back in Scratch 1.3 I wanted to play around with networking. So I learned about Scratch's Remote Sensor Connections and then built a chat program by creating two servers in Python. The first was to host the actual chat server, the second was a proxy that connected to Scratch and then to my chat server. This allowed normal RSC packets to be passed to an external server. Eventually Scratch 1.4 came out and I had Scratcher enable Mesh so they could connect to my server directly without having to download a program. But I had figured out a way around Scratch's “lack” of networking capabilities.
“Ooo, can I call you Señorita Bee?” ~Chibi-Matoran
- __init__
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Scratcher
1000+ posts
Scratch has a marketing problem
Back in Scratch 1.3 I wanted to play around with networking. So I learned about Scratch's Remote Sensor Connections and then built a chat program by creating two servers in Python. The first was to host the actual chat server, the second was a proxy that connected to Scratch and then to my chat server. This allowed normal RSC packets to be passed to an external server. Eventually Scratch 1.4 came out and I had Scratcher enable Mesh so they could connect to my server directly without having to download a program. But I had figured out a way around Scratch's “lack” of networking capabilities.Ooh, I remember Chat.PY!
thisandagain pls explain
- herohamp
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Scratcher
1000+ posts
Scratch has a marketing problem
Please do not necropost <3fake newsI agree.
- TheAspiringHacker
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Scratcher
100+ posts
Scratch has a marketing problem
FTR, the article is now at https://medium.freecodecamp.org/scratch-has-a-marketing-problem-f84626bd18ef . (Lol, FreeCodeCamp.)
IMO Scratch doesn't have a marketing problem; it has a design problem. Scratch markets exactly what it is: childish and limiting (even more so with Scratch 3.0). I had a conversation with badatprogrammingibe where they said that Scratch's fun for a programmer comes from the challenges posed by its lack of abstractions. Scratch's lack of abstractions is a design flaw and its difficulty is simply an unintended consequence. The Scratch Team seems to be more focused on multimedia than building a solid programming language for teaching basic computing principles. Maybe people like badatprogrammingibe derive fun from Scratch's design, but I find Scratch absolutely painful. Scratch isn't difficult because its paradigms are difficult or because my problem domain is difficult; Scratch is difficult precisely because it is too low-level. In certain ways Scratch is as low-level as assembly; variables are global like unlimited registers, one must create a global “call stack” list and deal with offsets from the top to use function-local variables that work in the presence of recursion, and one can't dynamically allocate memory like with Lisp's cons without creating a global list to be a “heap” and writing malloc. Oh, are we teaching people low-level programming with a cutesy block-based interface now? Well, to gain the abstractions common in mainstream PLs, one has to derive them in a low-level programming style. Too bad the Scratch Team cares more about adding the next multimedia extension than adding lambda abstractions, first-class lists or pairs, stack-local variables, or even merely functions that can return results. Scratch is fundamentally crippled as an educational PL, Scratch 3.0 is going in the wrong direction, and the Scratch Team needs to pay attention and fix it or else risk better educational PLs such as Racket and Snap! render Scratch obsolete.
See also https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/292866/ .
IMO Scratch doesn't have a marketing problem; it has a design problem. Scratch markets exactly what it is: childish and limiting (even more so with Scratch 3.0). I had a conversation with badatprogrammingibe where they said that Scratch's fun for a programmer comes from the challenges posed by its lack of abstractions. Scratch's lack of abstractions is a design flaw and its difficulty is simply an unintended consequence. The Scratch Team seems to be more focused on multimedia than building a solid programming language for teaching basic computing principles. Maybe people like badatprogrammingibe derive fun from Scratch's design, but I find Scratch absolutely painful. Scratch isn't difficult because its paradigms are difficult or because my problem domain is difficult; Scratch is difficult precisely because it is too low-level. In certain ways Scratch is as low-level as assembly; variables are global like unlimited registers, one must create a global “call stack” list and deal with offsets from the top to use function-local variables that work in the presence of recursion, and one can't dynamically allocate memory like with Lisp's cons without creating a global list to be a “heap” and writing malloc. Oh, are we teaching people low-level programming with a cutesy block-based interface now? Well, to gain the abstractions common in mainstream PLs, one has to derive them in a low-level programming style. Too bad the Scratch Team cares more about adding the next multimedia extension than adding lambda abstractions, first-class lists or pairs, stack-local variables, or even merely functions that can return results. Scratch is fundamentally crippled as an educational PL, Scratch 3.0 is going in the wrong direction, and the Scratch Team needs to pay attention and fix it or else risk better educational PLs such as Racket and Snap! render Scratch obsolete.
See also https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/292866/ .
Long live Kyoto Animation!
- Jonathan50
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Scratcher
1000+ posts
Scratch has a marketing problem
In certain ways Scratch is as low-level as assembly; variables are global like unlimited registers, one must create a global “call stack” list and deal with offsets from the top to use function-local variables that work in the presence of recursion,You can use custom block parameters. (The only problem is that they can't be assigned to, and then your project gets crowded with lots of helper blocks.)
Last edited by Jonathan50 (Sept. 27, 2018 22:47:14)
Not yet a Knight of the Mu Calculus.
- know0your0true0color
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Scratcher
100+ posts
Scratch has a marketing problem
bruhStop necroposting
The latest post was 4 years ago
Hi! I'm know0your0true0color, you can also call me Fresh