Scratch

fullmoon · 2011-07-10 21:58:17

bharvey wrote:
Taneb wrote:
There's a mailing list!?
As fullmoon joins the select group of cat-letters-out-of-bags, with emeritus members Shadow and Lucario.

Do I get another pin for that? big_smile

Oh, and I'm glad to hear the good news about your tumor (...that sounds rather odd, but I'm relieved that it was benign).

owetre18 · 2011-07-10 22:45:56

Isn't BYOB suppost to be open - source? If it's not, why has it been continuing? If there is a dev thing, where is it?

14God · 2011-07-11 00:46:14

I think all schools should have a little computer science from K-12 and have some optional extensive courses for those who are interested.

Jens · 2011-07-11 03:33:14

owetre18 wrote:
Isn't BYOB suppost to be open - source? If it's not, why has it been continuing? If there is a dev thing, where is it?

It's cool that you're interested in the BYOB source code. The latest official release currently is BYOB 3.1.1, it can be downloaded from

http://byob.berkeley.edu/

and it includes all sources and everything that's needed to hack it. This is also the site where everything will be posted in the future, so you should definitely bookmark and watch it. smile

Then there's the development for BYOB 4.0 a.k.a. Snap which is a complete rewrite of BYOB in JavaScript and HTML5. This is also open source but currently closed development, i.e. we're not actively seeking code contributions from the community just yet, while we're still laying the foundations. This is what the mini-mailing list is for.

You can check the current status of the BYOB4/Snap rewrite by looking at an experimental page at

http://chirp.scratchr.org/dl/experiment … /snap.html

or an experimental version for very high-res displays (iPhone) at

http://chirp.scratchr.org/dl/experiment … p_big.html

These demo pages change very often, sometimes every couple of hours, so be sure to empty your browser's cache often (shift-click the refresh button in Firefox) in order to see the changes. However, while development may be "rapid" in a software-engineering sense it's not that fast that you'll be able to see something different every day. Therefore I'm twittering about it (@moenig) whenever I feel that a new milestone has been reached.

Some explanations and materials can also be found at

http://www.chirp.scratchr.org/blog/

since this is all JavaScript it's all open-source anyway. For good measure I'm releasing everything under an M.I.T. licence, which makes it even more "free and open" than Scratch. Feel free to experiment with it any way you wish!

Does that answer your question?

Last edited by Jens (2011-07-11 04:09:26)

scimonster · 2011-07-11 05:12:15

I just looked at your experimental build, and here's some things I want to point out and ask:
Why does the block say "heading"?
What are the and blocks?
The shadows while dragging are good. tongue
Clicking on a block doesn't do anything.
Not all the blocks are there, but they will be later, right?
You'll be adding drop-downs later also?
Will there be separate "palettes" or no?
The right-click menu is a bit ugly right now... but it's interesting!
It looks sort of like the experimental viewer. tongue

When I try to close or navigate away from it, it pops up something saying

This page is asking you to confirm that you want to leave - data you have entered may not be saved.

Is saving possible?

I'll have more to say when you update it. smile

Last edited by scimonster (2011-07-11 05:13:11)

Jens · 2011-07-11 05:31:17

Oh, this is just an - as of now nonfunctional - demo for the appearance of blocks, their labels are pure fantasy. In fact, you can create your own blocks by right clicking on them and entering your own block specs (in the block's context menu select "spec" and enter a label, use %s, %n, %b and %c for input slots). You can also change the color of blocks through the context menu.

Last edited by Jens (2011-07-11 05:56:08)

nathanprocks · 2011-07-11 06:24:21

awesome. this is the first javascript programming language i've ever seen. and it has draggable blocks!

bharvey · 2011-07-11 11:19:22

fullmoon wrote:
Do I get another pin for that?

Here you go...

Oh, and I'm glad to hear the good news about your tumor (...that sounds rather odd, but I'm relieved that it was benign).

Thanks! My body is almost free of medical technology, except for one new IV that they just put in to replace the one that never really worked, put in by The Idiot. (Maybe Jens can sue her for me. She's an idiot not only because it didn't work; that was the least of it.)

bharvey · 2011-07-11 13:01:20

14God wrote:
I think all schools should have a little computer science from K-12 and have some optional extensive courses for those who are interested.

I'm not sure there's anything you can respectably call "computer science" in K-2, but maybe. I'm actually much more interested in what schools shouldn't do with young kids, e.g., teach them MS Office and Photoshop and how to plagiarize their research reports on the Web.

I'm definitely with you on the optional extensive courses; those are the fun ones to teach!

bharvey · 2011-07-11 13:04:24

Jens wrote:
You can check the current status of the BYOB4/Snap rewrite by looking at an experimental page at

http://chirp.scratchr.org/dl/experiment … /snap.html

except, of course, in Firefox on my Mac. sad

For good measure I'm releasing everything under an M.I.T. licence, which makes it even more "free and open" than Scratch.

Remind me to try to talk you into GPL.

Jens · 2011-07-11 13:46:42

Right, you were going to let me inspect your Mac instead of holing up in that arctic resort... smile

shadow_7283 · 2011-07-11 14:34:49

bharvey wrote:
I'm actually much more interested in what schools shouldn't do with young kids, e.g., teach them MS Office and Photoshop and how to plagiarize their research reports on the Web.

How did you know? tongue

Taneb · 2011-07-11 17:26:55

I did a two year ICT class that ended earlier this month, the closest we got to actual programming would probably be looking at the user interface of Microsoft Access. Half of the stuff should have been taught in English.

owetre18 · 2011-07-11 18:45:36

Jens wrote:
owetre18 wrote:
Isn't BYOB suppost to be open - source? If it's not, why has it been continuing? If there is a dev thing, where is it?
It's cool that you're interested in the BYOB source code. The latest official release currently is BYOB 3.1.1, it can be downloaded from

http://byob.berkeley.edu/

and it includes all sources and everything that's needed to hack it. This is also the site where everything will be posted in the future, so you should definitely bookmark and watch it.

Then there's the development for BYOB 4.0 a.k.a. Snap which is a complete rewrite of BYOB in JavaScript and HTML5. This is also open source but currently closed development, i.e. we're not actively seeking code contributions from the community just yet, while we're still laying the foundations. This is what the mini-mailing list is for.

You can check the current status of the BYOB4/Snap rewrite by looking at an experimental page at

http://chirp.scratchr.org/dl/experiment … /snap.html

or an experimental version for very high-res displays (iPhone) at

http://chirp.scratchr.org/dl/experiment … p_big.html

These demo pages change very often, sometimes every couple of hours, so be sure to empty your browser's cache often (shift-click the refresh button in Firefox) in order to see the changes. However, while development may be "rapid" in a software-engineering sense it's not that fast that you'll be able to see something different every day. Therefore I'm twittering about it (@moenig) whenever I feel that a new milestone has been reached.

Some explanations and materials can also be found at

http://www.chirp.scratchr.org/blog/

since this is all JavaScript it's all open-source anyway. For good measure I'm releasing everything under an M.I.T. licence, which makes it even more "free and open" than Scratch. Feel free to experiment with it any way you wish!

Does that answer your question?

Thanks for all of the info. I have and love BYOB, and I tried to find the genius block making code. That's why I asked about open-source.

bharvey · 2011-07-12 06:11:27

owetre18 wrote:
I tried to find the genius block making code.

The genius making the code is Jens. He's not a block. tongue

scimonster · 2011-07-12 06:13:55

bharvey wrote:
owetre18 wrote:
I tried to find the genius block making code.
The genius making the code is Jens. He's not a block.

LOL!
Maybe he meant "genius's block making code"? tongue

roijac · 2011-07-12 06:33:39

scimonster wrote:
bharvey wrote:
owetre18 wrote:
I tried to find the genius block making code.
The genius making the code is Jens. He's not a block.
LOL!
Maybe he meant "genius's block making code"?

probably he meant the code is genius wink

Lucario621 · 2011-07-12 09:07:18

bharvey wrote:
with emeritus members Shadow and Lucario.

Hehe...

Lucario621 · 2011-07-12 09:17:39

Jens wrote:
You can check the current status of the BYOB4/Snap rewrite by looking at an experimental page at

http://chirp.scratchr.org/dl/experiment … /snap.html

or an experimental version for very high-res displays (iPhone) at

http://chirp.scratchr.org/dl/experiment … p_big.html

I tried them out with my android phone -- it works decently. One drawback is that when touching on the textfields, it doesn't open up my phone's keyboard.

Jens · 2011-07-12 12:18:43

Oh, that's cool, Lucario, thanks for trying those pages on your android phone! I don't own one so I'm very glad someone checked. Can you actually drag and drop blocks? Does the context menu pop up when you touch and hold one finger and then tap with another one?

You're right that text entry on touchscreen devices does not yet work (neither on iOS), but we'll get around to it. We probably won't be using the built-in virtual keyboards but instead write our own Morphic ones, though.

bharvey · 2011-07-12 16:19:57

Jens wrote:
We probably won't be using the built-in virtual keyboards but instead write our own Morphic ones, though.

Jens means, "instead we'll use the actual hardware keyboard built into all the good phones." smile

P.S. I see the blocks, but it doesn't do anything on my Droid either in Firefox or in Browser. sad (So I guess I'm not entitled to be mean about Lucario's Android and (what I really meant) Jens's iPhone.) Another thing I'd rather have spent this week doing than sitting in a hospital room. I know -- Jens, you can come visit me for a day or two! Then you can play with my Mac and my Droid.

P.S. I mean, here in Bergen -- but you have to hurry. smile

Last edited by bharvey (2011-07-13 11:27:01)

14God · 2011-07-13 13:56:49

I'm seriously upset with the Scratch team for not putting all the features of BYOB into Scratch 2.0 because they are 'too complex'. You know my 10 year old brother now understands lambda and I learned the trig functions from scratch so I think challenging kids with more complex features teaches them to use them.

Snap is gonna leave Scratch 2.0 in the dust.

Last edited by 14God (2011-07-13 13:58:24)

bharvey · 2011-07-13 14:43:44

14God wrote:
I'm seriously upset with the Scratch team for not putting all the features of BYOB into Scratch 2.0 because they are 'too complex'.

Agreed. Some days I find them infuriatingly incoherent because they get (quite honestly) mad when you say they're "afraid" of some piece of complexity, and then they say what sounds to me like the same thing in only slightly different words.

Snap is gonna leave Scratch 2.0 in the dust.

Aw, man, don't be competitive on our behalf. We have learned so much from Mitchel and John and the gang. Many of their design decisions have been both brilliant and carefully researched; yes, even the decisions to leave something out, or to use a simplified version rather than the most general possible version. We and they share most of the same intellectual antecedents (you can see a partial family tree at the end of the "trailer" project). There would never have been a BYOB/Snap without Scratch! I dunno about Jens, but I would never have thought to try it; earlier attempts at drag-and-drop programming were mostly even more limiting than (multithreaded!) Scratch, except for a few clearly meant only for adults. (Well, except for Andy DiSessa's Boxer project, also brilliant in different ways.)

Also, the Scratch Team have bent over backward to be helpful to us, in design conversations, in encouraging us to present at MIT Scratch Conference and Scratch Day events, in joining the Advisory Board of our proposed NSF project, etc. They haven't been the least bit defensive about guarding their intellectual priority against us.

I still find it easier to program at a keyboard, to be honest. But hardly ever have I spent 20 minutes just staring at a piece of Scheme or Logo code because I can't believe how beautiful it is. Here's a Scheme example just to show it's possible (look it up in Simply Scheme):

Code:

(define (treemap fn tree)
  (make-tree (fn (datum tree))
             (map (lambda (child) (treemap fn child))
                  (children tree))))

But I get trapped in BYOB code that way all the time.

shadow_7283 · 2011-07-13 15:45:09

Yep, I'm not going to pretend that blocks make for easier (or rather, more efficient) programming than text (go Python!), but they have so many other strengths that I think they're worth my while. smile

Last edited by shadow_7283 (2011-07-13 15:45:32)

owetre18_sprites · 2011-07-13 16:01:08

roijac wrote:
scimonster wrote:
bharvey wrote:

The genius making the code is Jens. He's not a block.
LOL!
Maybe he meant "genius's block making code"?
probably he meant the code is genius

Correct! Ding ding ding! (it's owetre18, forgot to log out of my other account)

Scratch

archived forums

#3401 2011-07-10 21:58:17

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

bharvey wrote:

Taneb wrote:

#3402 2011-07-10 22:45:56

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

#3403 2011-07-11 00:46:14

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

#3404 2011-07-11 03:33:14

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

owetre18 wrote:

#3405 2011-07-11 05:12:15

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

#3406 2011-07-11 05:31:17

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

#3407 2011-07-11 06:24:21

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

#3408 2011-07-11 11:19:22

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

fullmoon wrote:

#3409 2011-07-11 13:01:20

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

14God wrote:

#3410 2011-07-11 13:04:24

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

Jens wrote:

#3411 2011-07-11 13:46:42

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

#3412 2011-07-11 14:34:49

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

bharvey wrote:

#3413 2011-07-11 17:26:55

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

#3414 2011-07-11 18:45:36

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

Jens wrote:

owetre18 wrote:

#3415 2011-07-12 06:11:27

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

owetre18 wrote:

#3416 2011-07-12 06:13:55

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

bharvey wrote:

owetre18 wrote:

#3417 2011-07-12 06:33:39

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

scimonster wrote:

bharvey wrote:

owetre18 wrote:

#3418 2011-07-12 09:07:18

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

bharvey wrote:

#3419 2011-07-12 09:17:39

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

Jens wrote:

#3420 2011-07-12 12:18:43

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

#3421 2011-07-12 16:19:57

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

Jens wrote:

#3422 2011-07-13 13:56:49

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

#3423 2011-07-13 14:43:44

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

14God wrote:

Code:

#3424 2011-07-13 15:45:09

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

#3425 2011-07-13 16:01:08

Re: BYOB 3 - Discussion Thread

roijac wrote:

scimonster wrote:

bharvey wrote:

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