Comments on: The Itch Remains.

By: Intentionally Obsolete » Blog Archive » More on Programming for Beginners

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 05:48:36 +0000

[...] A while ago, I wrote a post about how I think that programming is really difficult to get into these days without a ton of effort on the learner’s part due to varying factors such as language complexity and operating system api’s. I then proceeded to discuss a product by MIT Media Labs called Scratch that was designed to teach children programming by addressing these issues. In case you don’t remember, I wasn’t too fond of Scratch. [...]

By: mluebbe

mluebbe — Sat, 19 May 2007 21:28:20 +0000

Wow.
I didn’t think anyone actually read this.

I understand your point with regards to systematic thinking when I was looking it over for the first time, for example – seeing how you were using controls to teach iteration without really having to get out a intro book and explain the concept of a loop.

I enjoyed slapping together some quick implementations of a barrel shifter and full adder in the digital logic sim. (http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/jay/495)

I think I may have been overly harsh on what your lab has accomplished, and am writing a second post right now addressing some of the points you brought up.
Most of this is due to cynicism, and experience with working with kids (and even adults in the past) where as soon as they realize that they can loop a belch.wav file in the lab, any higher purpose goes out the window pretty fast.

I strongly feel that getting young people excited and involved in technology is something our field hasn’t been doing a good job of it recently. It’s nice to see that I’m not the only one who cares, and others are trying to do something about it.

I hope that you can find time to write some feedback on my next post regarding this matter!

By: mres

mres — Sat, 19 May 2007 13:59:03 +0000

Hi. My research group at the MIT Media Lab developed the Scratch software and website. I would encourage you to look more closely at the projects that people are posting on the Scratch website. In your blog, you write: “I have a hard time seeing anyone doing much more with it than making inappropriate animations and trying to harass people nearby with a barrage of sound effects.” In fact, people are creating a wide range of innovative projects, including strategy games (http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/bmarcell/1137), science simulations (http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/jay/495), paint programs (http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/fab_programmer123/4645), and animated stories (http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/vally/1224).

I hope you’ll take a look at some of these projects (and also download the software and create your own projects!), and see if that changes your view about Scratch.

Regarding your comment: “Most bothersome to me is the total lack of coding involved via the drag and drop interface”… You seem to equate “coding” with writing strings of text. For me, the most important part of “coding” and “programming” is learning to think systematically, and that definitely happens when people learn to “code” in Scratch. When people create Scratch projects, they learn key computational concepts such as iteration, conditionals, variables, event-triggering, and threads — and, perhaps most importantly, they learn about the process of design and debugging. It is true that you would not want to use a drag-and-drop graphical interface like Scratch to create a very big, complex program. But we believe that Scratch provides a very good introduction to the core ideas of programming and “coding”, and provides a very good foundation if people decide to move on to other more traditional programming languages later.