Scratch

While chalkmarrow has demonstrated an incredibly elegant commenting technique, I don't see how it substantially improves on just leaving dangling Say statements next to the script you are attempting to comment.  The first time you do a Clean Up command, all your comments are going to be mixed up.  Plus, it takes far longer to build the costumes for the comments than it does to stick some Say statements together. 

Maybe we should stop trying to come up with elegant work-arounds and see what we can do to help the Scratch team come up with a solution integrated into Scratch.  What resources do they need to expedite this issue and come up with a solution?

The problem with work arounds is just that they are work arounds!. Comments should be part of any language. I cannot stress the need for comments strongly enough. I teach a college level beginning programming class for non-programmers. I used Scratch for the first five weeks. I knew from the code what the students were trying to accomplish but not their thought processes at that moment. A comment would have helped me to understand what the student was thinking. Also, we had students exchange projects with each other. The assignment was to look at the other student's project and explain what was happening. All the students immediately stated that they had problems understanding the other student's project. I had the students explain their projects to each other. Only then did the A-ha lights go off and the students were able to understand what the other student was attempting and how he/she tried to accomplish it. We used Alice for the last five weeks of the class. I taught the students how to comment the methods they used to create their worlds. The comments were an immense help to the other students and myself. Documenting code is just good programming practice. I am not saying the comment block was the best method, but it was a good method and better than nothing. I love Scratch as a beginning language. Scratch teaches the basic programming concepts very well. But , I truly believe a comment method should have been built into the initial release of the language.

about every thing like senses and stuff i don't know how tomake four targets down and it stops the animation

I think this topic is outdated since 1.3 is out. I'm not saying it IS.

TheoMarr wrote:

If you try to use the comment block in Scratch 1.4 it stops your creation and when you try to export a sprite with a comment block in Scratch 1.4 and open it, it errors. And, I still find the comment block very useful. Can you make a Scratch 1.4 with the comment block brought back? Just asking...

Have you tried the new "Add Comment" feature you can use in the Scripts area?  It replaces the old Comment Block.  You right-click (Alt-click if you are using a single-button mouse) in a blank area of Scripts and select "Add Comment" from the menu that pops up.  A place to enter text appears and you can type in what you want.  You can then drag the block of text over to any block and attach it to the block, if you want.  It's a cool feature 

Jonathanpb wrote:

I joined when the current version of Scratch was 1.2.1. This meant that I missed the comments. I was glad when they were added in 1.3, however.

I never knew the comments used to exist until I downloaded an old game. The game wouldn't go! I had to remove the comments from the scripts so I could play. After a long time, I got it ready. I was going to save the Scratch project so I wouldn't have to go through all the work again, but I remembered that there was some Emulator text! I don't have Emulator, so when I save, it would become a different font (that did not fit the project)! So I had to fake the Emulator text and delete the real text... but it was worth it!

It seems quite silly to insert scripts in scripts... I much prefer what we have now. 

I believe the comment blocks were only in the beta versions of scratch before 1.0, I joined when 1.0 was out and I don't recall comment blocks.

coolstuff wrote:

coka wrote:

Jonathanpb wrote:

I joined when the current version of Scratch was 1.2.1. This meant that I missed the comments. I was glad when they were added in 1.3, however.

I never knew the comments used to exist until I downloaded an old game. The game wouldn't go! I had to remove the comments from the scripts so I could play. After a long time, I got it ready. I was going to save the Scratch project so I wouldn't have to go through all the work again, but I remembered that there was some Emulator text! I don't have Emulator, so when I save, it would become a different font (that did not fit the project)! So I had to fake the Emulator text and delete the real text... but it was worth it!

It seems quite silly to insert scripts in scripts... I much prefer what we have now. 

I believe the comment blocks were only in the beta versions of scratch before 1.0, I joined when 1.0 was out and I don't recall comment blocks.

Comment blocks were in the beta of 1.2.

I joined just after 1.2.1 was released, so I wasn't around at the era - but I first started using Scratch with 1.1, but took a year-and-a-half long break 'till February of 2008. (I realise that my join date says March, but that's always inaccurate, as I remember it was late February.

The dates are wrong? Is it just the month, or what?

Jonathanpb wrote:

I joined when the current version of Scratch was 1.2.1. This meant that I missed the comments. I was glad when they were added in 1.3, however.

I never knew the comments used to exist until I downloaded an old game. The game wouldn't go! I had to remove the comments from the scripts so I could play. After a long time, I got it ready. I was going to save the Scratch project so I wouldn't have to go through all the work again, but I remembered that there was some Emulator text! I don't have Emulator, so when I save, it would become a different font (that did not fit the project)! So I had to fake the Emulator text and delete the real text... but it was worth it!

It seems quite silly to insert scripts in scripts... I much prefer what we have now. 

Yeah, same here

coka wrote:

I believe the comment blocks were only in the beta versions of scratch before 1.0, I joined when 1.0 was out and I don't recall comment blocks.

Then you wouldn't have bothered to get the beta of Scratch 1.2.

I only joined at the era of Scratch 1.3.1, however, since I saw a project about a hidden "say nothing" block by someone called homestarfan I have been more and more active about hacking and seeing early versions of Scratch. Eventually I saw a project about a hidden comment block so therefore now I know it exists.