Scratch

Kingbradley6 wrote:

Well before I start I must say I'm not an educator but this seemed the only forum suitable to post this.

I'm currently a 15 year old GCSE student, but after playing video games fairly often I had always wanted to create a game from a fairly early age.

I could never find anything.  At age 13 I learnt HTML & CSS as, in my opinion, they could become a substitute for not knowing programming.  But I could only ever create websites on games rather than actual games!

I kept on searching Google to find Game Engines only to find that they required a good knowledge of statically typed OOP languages (probably C++  ).

Then one day, my dad informed me that there was an article on the BBC of a new program whereby people can create movies, animations and games.

I downloaded one of the first releases of Scratch and got to work.  At first it was a bit hard to grasp but I soon got good, at least in my opinion!

I never uploaded any of my Scratch projects up to this website but I did embed them into my own website using my knowledge of HTML.

Eventually, despite how good Scratch is, I wanted slightly more options.  Not that it is bad, I was just tired of Scratch's app GUI.

And so I went on to learn a programming language and I must say that the whole concept of Scratch really helps you learn a programing language.

I can now program in Ruby - but it would have never happened without Scratch.  Unfortunately Scratch doesn't teach you GUI programming so I can only create console shell applications but nevertheless, for someone that wants to go to Oxbridge and do a Joint Honours in Mathematics and Computer Science, this is a great "push-in-the-right-direction".

I'm currently now learning both GUI programming, JRuby, RoR framework and Java as then hopefully I can create exact look-a-likes of Scratch.

So, Thank you Scratch!  I suggest anyone who wants to learn a programming language and doesn't know anything to learn Scratch - it really does help you understand variables and 'if's and 'elsif's etc.

I'm also looking foward to NetScratch, hopefully that can teach me to develop network programs in Ruby.

Glad to hear that you took the initiative to move on to more serious programming languages after you mastered Scratch.

If you are interested in Java, take a look at Greenfoot.

If you like drag and drop programming but would like to work in 3D, take a look at Alice.

They can both be downloaded for free.

Last edited by dbal (2008-08-21 12:05:01)

Kingbradley6 wrote:

I'm more interesting in coding than working with a Visual programming software.  That's why I'm currently working with Ruby 

It's fun once you know what your doing to write hundreds of lines of code - seriously.

Greenfoot provides the best of both worlds:  Text-based coding combined with visual output.

Kingbradley6 wrote:

OOP helps if I want to attend a CS course.

I totally agree.  It not only helps, it is absolutely essential to learn OOP if you want to succeed in the world of serious programming (including game programming for which the standard is C++).  While I personally prefer Java (because it is easier to avoid errors than in C++), there are a number of good OOP languages out there.

My advice is to make certain that you learn a language that is strongly typed.

Well I prefer Java to C++.  C++ is only needed in the gaming industry or where software that need to be quick and powerful and although I'm into computers and programming I do not wish to become a programmer so learning Ruby and Java are fine for me.  Just hobby stuff.

Thanks for all the info.

It's very similar to Python but just IMO cleaner syntax.  Although it's slower than C++ and Java it is a pretty powerful OOPL.

Also Ruby on Rails is useful although I'm not very experienced with the RoR framework.  Yet to learn it.

Lol - I'm on FireFox3.  And it's just at the moment it's the only thing I'm doing.  No more tabs open - unusual for me.

I should be customer support 

Thanks for the nice sig comment 

I've still got two more weeks left of my summer holiday.  Perhaps it is because I'm English?  8:00pm here, even if I did have school - no school at 8pm 

It's called autumn mate        Just kidding.

Well for the more advanced CSS stuff that takes your website from professional to enterprise-cool class you should just search Google, but for the basics and to grasp CSS try Tizag:

http://www.tizag.com/cssT/

It's also got other good tutorials on HTML, PHP, JavaScript and MySQL plus more.

You can also use W3Schools but it's slightly old nowdays.