Ooh, lucky! I've been hinting for a Raspberry Pi, but my parents aren't really catching on.

davidkt wrote:

Got an Arduino Uno for Christmas!

Awesome! I got one of them a few years ago.

davidkt wrote:

Got an Arduino Uno for Christmas!

I got the Sparkfun Inventor kit for my birthday a while back!

technoboy10 wrote:

davidkt wrote:

Got an Arduino Uno for Christmas!

Awesome! I got one of them a few years ago.

It's pretty cool! I just made a combination-lock thingy with a potentiometer. I do have some experience with electronics; I've been making BEAMbots since I was 10, I think.

Can you help me on story I'm working on? I need to learn how to change the backrounds without messing up.

Hi ive been around in scratch for some time i used to use scratch for fun but i left it to program in C# now i want to get involed in the advanced topics of scratch so i just wanted to say hi

Hi there! Feel free to ask me anything.

WHAT IS LAMBDA? I do not know what it is except for Python keyword…

I think you said I could post a question here as a reply, and you would get back to me. I have a bunch of questions, but I will start out with the obvious - is there a really good book for 2.0 that handles all subject comprehensively? the books I have seen, and bought, are written at a low level. I am looking for a guide which truly covers everything like what the possible values for pen color or pen shade mean all the way through to issues like the fact that trig functions interpret input as degrees, not radians.

I am relatively new to Scratch, a few months now, but I am no stranger to application development. I like the Scratch environment for it's visual interest for introducing development techniques and terminologies - but, I am also trying to demonstrate that it is a tool that can do real work, and real math.

Other than tearing apart other people's code to see how it works, is there a singular source for all Scratch functions?

Thanks for hosting this forum.

Thanks for the hello. I have not yet moved to integrating Sprite with other languages. Right now, I am in the middle of a career change. After years of application development and later sales, I decided to teach in the Bronx - not the most fertile ground for education in NYC. The DOE is cobbling together what will ultimately be a six year curriculum in software development. I am working ahead of them so I can incorporate technology into my math classes - not using software to solve problems, but rather creating software that takes a specific problem and then generalizes a solution for all problems of the same nature. For 6 - 12, stand alone Scratch is probably one of the smoothest ways to slide into programming from math (think Cartesian coordinates being taught to sixth graders in a conventional way, and then imagine a different groups of students being taught how to move a character around a maze using coordinate pairs).

That said, I am spending a lot of time convincing myself that I understand all the ins and outs of Scratch 2.0, and I am learning a new approach to development - from an old school 3GL environment to an OO approach. It's a big curve, but I am having fun.

I created two pretty swift little pieces of code to create Serpinski's triangle - both are shared under my joeroganscratch name. I have shared them, but when I look up my own profile it says I have shared nothing, so I need to figure that out as well.

So I will use the general forums for basic Scratch related questions, and this forum for more complicated questions. Thank you again for your reply. Given that you love math, you may want to take a look at my Serpinski project, although you probably have long since built something similar. Run it in turbo mode. I haven't yet added the code fix to detect whether turbo is off or on. That's coming soon.

Joe Rogan

JoeRoganScratch wrote:

is there a really good book for 2.0 that handles all subject comprehensively? [...] truly covers everything like what the possible values for pen color or pen shade mean

I'm pretty sure you won't find such a book. Stuff like how pen shade works is known through reversed engineering, but not really documented anywhere. Certainly you can ask (just make a new thread), and usually someone (nXIII) will know. And the wiki's a pretty good resource.

The tips system is pretty good for that kind of thing. It's definitely reference material, though, and not a book or guide.

u8y7541 wrote:

WHAT IS LAMBDA?

It's the 11th letter of the Greek alphabet.

No, actually, in programming it's a mini function which is easy to define and returns a pretty simple constant. For example, if you wanted to make a function which added 2 to the input number, then you could use a lambda function for that.

No, not exactly. Lambda is any function that doesn't have a name. Look it up on the Scratch Wiki!

Hardmath123 wrote:

No, not exactly. Lambda is any function that doesn't have a name. Look it up on the Scratch Wiki!

Lambda functions can have names! How else do you keep track of them?

davidkt wrote:

Lambda functions can have names!

No, they can't. A lambda is a value, like 2 or “hello”. You're binding it in an environment, not giving the lambda itself a name.

davidkt wrote:

How else do you keep track of them?

That's sorta the point of lambda functions. A lot of times you'll only use a function once or twice, and in that case, you'll usually use a lambda.

I don't think the named-ness of lambda is nearly as important as its first-class-ness. Lambdas can be used as inputs to functions, or outputs of functions, or members of lists. That's why we don't care about its name: when it's an input to a function, you get another name.

Thanks - I had pretty much did what you said, and now I have a “ref guide” to pen color and shade. I know that Scratch's reason for being is to entice kids into the programming environment and to have fun. However, if they have a specific task to do, I don't want them spending an entire class period finding out what “red” is. I am an old school application developer. Scratch is great. It provides such a great framework to decompose problems - which is a Common Core standard. It also encourages pattern recognition and working from a specific problem into an generalization of a problem and a general algorithm for problems of this type.

Thanks for posting

nXIII wrote:

davidkt wrote:

Lambda functions can have names!

No, they can't. A lambda is a value, like 2 or “hello”. You're binding it in an environment, not giving the lambda itself a name.

Ohh… I get what you mean. Like when you do foo = 2, you're assigning 2 to foo, not giving 2 a name (foo.)