Scratch

Well yes, a Scratch project can run in the background and continue to perform calculations and such (though it becomes a lot slower). A key logger won't work in the background though because the keyboard is allocated by your operating system to react with the current window only, running Scratch in the background means that it no longer picks up keyboard commands in the same way that what you type does not appear in the google search bar when your internet browser is minimised.

sparks wrote:

Well yes, a Scratch project can run in the background and continue to perform calculations and such (though it becomes a lot slower). A key logger won't work in the background though because the keyboard is allocated by your operating system to react with the current window only, running Scratch in the background means that it no longer picks up keyboard commands in the same way that what you type does not appear in the google search bar when your internet browser is minimised.

I do believe it depends on how the code is.
If the code is in the form of an event, then it probably won't react because the Windows host process will only send that event if the window has focus. If it uses a general keyboard class inside a continous loop, it would probably sense it!

sparks wrote:

I don't think so. As I type this I'm running a Scratch project that counts the number of times the space key is pressed using a (forever: if key space pressed then change var by 1) script and the value of var is still 0 by the time I finish typing 

Yes, because Scratch evaluates the key press its own way.
I mean applications in general.