Scratch

But I'm not an educator!

eyra

im a high school scratcher

If they think you are crazy, then they clearly aren't your peers.  There do seem to be a fair number of high-school age scratch programmers, though, so you should be able to find others interested.

archmage, there is no such thing as a programming language that's 'too simple'. If other languages are harder to get aquainted to it might just be because they were specified at earlier times when computers weren't as powerful than they are today. Now, of course, Scratch can't do a lot of things other languages can (complex data types, methods, arguments, classes, inheritance etc.), but on the other hand, you can do spectactular projects with Scratch that you couldn't even think about doing in a conventional language (just consider the broadcasting system and think about trying concurrent computing in another language). I do like your projects, and I think you're doing a great job programming in Scratch, and in doing that you're learning a lot about programming in general. You'll be able to reuse that once you graduate to a 'real' programming language.

I am using scratch in my elective computer class XD  because I have a lot of spare time I did some stuff at home (my pong series, try it ?) and they were like how do you do that? So I guess it just depends on your friends, class, school?

Kelly~!~

As I am certainly at the other end of the demographics from a typical high schooler, some of these comments may not completely apply to that group.  But one thing that shouldn't be overlooked is the usefulness of Scratch as a prototyping tool for programming in "serious" languages.  Unlike just doing pseudocode, with Scratch you can actually run bits and pieces of your code and see the results - quickly and visually, and often with errors quite apparent. ("Why did the ball go there? … Oh!).  If the cause of the problem isn't apparent - you have the forums and hundreds of examples to go to for help.

Personally, since discovering Scratch, I have yet to finish a complete Scratch program/project despite spending quite a few hours "Scratching".  The limitiations Jens lists are real - and there are many other options for the final effort.  If your goal is passing the AP exams or creating professional web pages, you should probably place your emphasis on Java or Flash/Action Script.

Even if you end up using other tools, however - and there are many great "serious" tools out there (Flash, Java Script, Java, C#, Python, … not to mention graphics tools such Photoshop, Maya, etc., Microsoft Office-type tools and dozens of specialty programs) - my advice is "don't abandon Scratch". An hour or two with Scratch at the start of a project - assuming it does have a sufficent feature subset for the task - has the potential for saving many hours later. Alternately, even if you do find a specific key feature that you need is missing from Scratch - it does give you some direction for choosing an alternative.