in reply to OT: Programming For Kids

My kids have been learning to use Scratch. It's nice that they're able to get simple games going quickly. They enjoy it. I like the messaging patterns they inherit from Smalltalk.

One shortcoming of Scratch is that the stand-alone version of Scratch 2.0 requires Adobe Air, which is not supported for Linux. So those of us who have mostly made the transition off of Windows and Macs are constrained to either use the web-based version, or fire up Wine or a VM.

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that many robotics projects incorporate some version of Scratch, and thus are difficult to use with Linux as well.

I keep hoping this situation will improve.


Dave

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Re^2: OT: Programming For Kids
by karlgoethebier (Abbot) on Nov 14, 2016 at 07:41 UTC
    "I like the messaging patterns..."

    Yes. Unfortunately one can't pass variables or lists. I don't know why. The guys on the Scratch forum complain about this :-(

    BTW, it reminded me to good old Director where you could write funny things like set the color of sprite "foo" to "green" or go to the frame (!) - until they switched to dot syntax ;-)

    Or some message to mission control:

    on directFleet me, pt
    set fleet to list (sShip1, sShip2 sShip3, sShip4, sShip5, sShip6)
    set newPos to map(pt, modlRect, stageRect)
    updateStage
    follow sShip1, newPos, fleet
end

    [download]

    Regards, Karl

    «The Crux of the Biscuit is the Apostrophe»

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