Scratch

Wow, Scratch here is so different...

this old screenshot of Scratch still looks a lot like Squeak E-Toys, it even has the racing car example that Alan Kay always used in his demonstrations of E-Toys. I'm very glad, though, that the Scratch UI evolved from 'tiles' to 'blocks'.

Hi, all.

The Scratch project started in January 2003. The first preliminary user test was in October of that year--and we found a lot of serious problems! The paper is based on that first version. We have been slowing improving Scratch based on feedback from users ever since. Scratch went through many, many changes between the version described in the paper and the first public release in January 2007.

The process of building Scratch itself is a lot like creating a great Scratch project--you build something, you test it, and you get feedback from others. Then you use what you've learned to build an improved version and the cycle repeats.  As many of you know for working on Scratch projects, this process of gradually learning things that help you make your project better is a lot of fun and very satisfying.


As Jens pointed out, the first versions of Scratch drew heavily from EToys (which I had worked on) and from LogoBlocks (a blocks programming language developed at the MIT Media Lab to control a tiny computer called the Cricket). Since both of those projects go back to the mid-1990's, you can see that the Scratch team has been refining their ideas about blocks-programming for over ten years!

  -- John

That would be cool - an image file. But from that early of a stage, it might not even have run on java.

Who knows, maybe it did, and maybe a .IMAGE file is still availabe.

I actually quite like the look of the old one, it's got a much bigger area to build in. Presumbably, the sprite list can be accessed by clicking one of the buttons above and switching from the script pane. I think I would prefer this, one of the things that really annoys me about Scratch is the lack of space which makes building large project with lots of sprites and scripts very hard work. Even the ability to resize the various screen section would be nice.
Just my thoughts,

SB

kevin_karplus wrote:

The "image" files are for Squeak, not java, and the picture looks like it is implemented pretty directly in Squeak e-toys.

Great! If I get that, then all I need is 1.0.2 to finish my collection!

The Scratch logo is still the same!