Scratch

You often hear about 07’ers and 08’ers on Scratch; I fit into the category mentioned last.
To be precise I joined the Scratch community on January 26th, which means that I’ve been on Scratch for a fairly long time.
But when I think about it; it doesn’t seem like a very long time ago, I was 13 and now I’m almost 15.

The reason why I directly started to like programming with Scratch is because when you open it and look at the different block palettes, you see directly what different functions there are; there are no other ones than those displayed.
When you start programming with other text-based languages for example BASIC; You don’t see what different ‘blocks’ there are, No, to do that you have to Google for a BASIC documentation etc.

That just takes time and it text-based languages have a tendency to look more advanced and complex than graphical based.
I have always wanted to learn how to program, when I was little and visited my dad’s workplace (Ericsson Mobile Platforms), I just looked at employee’s computer screens and wondered what they were doing.
When I was about 4-5 years old my grandfather gave me his old computer running Windows 3.1, I started to play with the computer and I learned how Windows worked.
A couple of years later my dad gave me his old computer running Windows 98; there were many new functions than in Windows 3.1 and I played around and learned even more.

When I saw the function “Restart in MS-DOS mode” I immediately tried it, unknowing about what it was.
The computer restarted and text popped up, no GUI here…
I had no clue what to do and I had to hold the power off button on the computer to turn it off again.
This situation can be compared to the situation I mentioned before; when first learning to program.

Windows 98 GUI mode is like Scratch, which I immediately started to play around with and Windows 98 MS-DOS mode is like text-based languages which I first didn’t get at all and which are very very hard for beginners.
In 2007 my computer skills had been a lot better and I built my own computer.
One day when we sat around the dinner table I asked dad if he knew programming, he said that he knew C and BASIC.
He also told me that he had made a computer game with BASIC back in the 80’s.

Right after I had finished my dinner I ran up to my room and Googled ‘BASIC’.
I think that one of the results was a Wikipedia article which I started to read; I found out that there was a BASIC dialect called Liberty BASIC.
I downloaded the Liberty BASIC trial version but I encountered a problem, where to start.
I read some online tutorials but they didn’t help me a lot.
I uninstalled LB and tried downloading Python.
Python was easier but I didn’t know how to make a game.
After a couple of minutes of Googling I found Scratch.
Right when I ran it for the first time it looked fairly simple compared to Python and BASIC.
I knew how coordinate systems worked and I tried to make some basic projects, my first game was a maze game.

I visited the Scratch website and set up an account.
I uploaded my project to the website and started working on more games.
When I visited the website a second time I had got two comments on my game.
One of them were from Paddle2See, who gave be constructive critic.
I added Paddle2See to my friend list and looked at his projects, the ones I saw was the first projects on Scratch I had looked at besides my own.
His projects were stunning and I thought “Are these things really made in Scratch?”
I finished some games I had started on before and I uploaded those too.
And again I received comments from Paddle2See, and I was encouraged to learn even more!
After a while I even made my own platformer engine.
Then I quit, I don’t know why, but I just did.
I didn’t make any projects for more than 8 months.
When I came back I made a scrolling platformer game for a school assignment.
Then I quit again for more than 6 months.

When I came back I was more active than I had ever been, especially in the forums, I can’t believe it’s just 3 months ago I made my first post outside Sow & Tell.
And in these three months I have learnt really much about programming.

Some people quit Scratch because they want to move on to more advanced languages.
I agree that Scratch isn’t the most advanced programming language, but that’s the challenge, to make advanced projects with a simple language.
I don’t think I’ll ever quit Scratch!

Scratch On And Have Fun!

Last edited by jacool (2009-11-26 14:35:09)