Interested in learning about coding? Scratch is a great place to start! Follow me as I experience using Scratch for the very first time.
Scratch is a drag & drop based coding application designed for children and those new to the world of programming. Instead of typing code, this program allows users to visually see commands and coding tasks. Scratch introduces the user into the world of coding and promotes computational thinking and problem solving skills (Scratch, n.d.). As it is designed for children, this program offers users with novice experience to practice basic coding commands. It still requires a level of critical thinking and problem solving to get your program to work correctly and has been a great introduction for me into the world of coding.
I decided to dive right into Scratch without looking at additional training materials or guides. Upon getting into a new project and seeing the cartoon cat and a list of commands that looks sort of like puzzle pieces, it became clear what I was supposed to try and do – use those puzzle pieces to control that cartoon. I started by adding a ‘move 10 steps’ piece. Hovering over the green flag said Go so I assumed that was supposed to make that cat move 10 steps but instead it did nothing. I figured maybe I need to add more steps for it to actually compute a move so I added a few more movement pieces hoping for some change and again nothing happened. At that point I searched for a video tutorial of sorts to get me going. I found a video on a YouTube channel called Kevin Briggs and skimmed through it and saw that I needed to add some wait time in between actions because as they were, the program was trying to run all movements at once. After adding in the wait times and seeing my character successfully move, I began the exploration and experimentation of what some of the other puzzle pieces could do. After much trial and error, I eventually finished a movement cycle and added in some text through various points. When everything was said and done, it turned into a birthday card program. You can find the program here: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/750704783
This exercise offered me insight into the complexity that coding can be. This program is designed towards children but still can be complicated when you’re trying to string together commands or actions that make logical sense. The snapping puzzle pieces made it seamless to put together multiple lines of commands with ease which was a pretty stark contrast to the introduction to python from the textbook. Although the templates were there throughout, typing these lines of code is what I imagined “true” coding to be. Typing each line of code, however, meant that mistakes are more likely to happen with spelling and or random spacing/character issues. As the very first introduction into coding, I found Scratch to be much easier to use over a more traditional language like python. The introduction to python felt similar to trying to run formulas in excel. While Scratch is better for children and those who want an introduction into coding, I feel that python has much more real world application as a “real” coding language and would be more beneficial to invest time in. As it has more application and use case, I believe Python is more popular.
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