Scratch

@ bharvey & Jens

You mention the problem for Variables, but no need to say that the problem is the same with Lists and Blocks repeatedly deleted and repeatedly re-appearing.

On the other hand I'm very surprised by the "robustness" of Byob : no blockages, no horrible dumps, contrarily to many "text-interpreted" languages .

Similarly as Byob 3 is progressing it  becomes more and more possible to export sprites. This issue is probably related with the problem you are going to fix.

Congratulations for your first-class sprite new features I've tested extensively. It is going to open new horizons (anchor/de-anchor is now very fast)

shadow_7283 wrote:

I'm kinda disappointed at how "procedures" turned out. We have yet to see the details yet, but it doesn't look too promising. 

It really has nothing on Snap's first-class data.

Yeah, they're dipping their toes in the water gingerly.  Never mind first class procedures; you can't even write reporter blocks.

At least they did take our ideas about putting a prototype in the hat block with orange blobs for the inputs. 

One interesting simplification is that instead of having a separate Block Editor, you build the custom block's script in the scripting area and just put that special kind of hat block on it.  I haven't decided how I feel about that; it seems like one less thing to learn, which is good, but in a large project the scripting area will get crowded, which is part of what building procedures should avoid.

But, considering that at one point they were saying "no new language features in 2.0," this is way better than nothing.

Once Snap (BYOB4) is up and running, we won't have to worry too much about Scratch's limitations. 

And JS is much more fun to write code in than squeak. Think of all the cool mods possible!

14God wrote:

When will BYOB 4 be in testing phase?

We haven't started yet!  Except for the Morphic implementation Jens has done in Javascript that will be the underpinning for the GUI.  Right now we're trying to get 3.1 officially out the door; I think we're about 98% done, but there are a few nagging design points where the software and the documentation have different ideas. 

The official schedule is to finish 4.0 by August so that it will be ready to use in CS 10 in the fall.  Since we're so behind schedule, we might have to settle for a beta-quality 3.99 in August, but we really can't slip further than that.

If we're lucky, then NSF will give us a bunch of money to help CS 10 take over the world, and part of that money will go to BYOB development, which will speed things up enormously when it comes to versions 4.1 and onward.  (First class disk files?  First class web pages?  Costumes and sounds for sure.)  Cross your fingers.

fullmoon wrote:

You know where to find me if you're looking for someone to write bits and pieces of the JS!

You're on!  Right now the only structure on which to hang bits and pieces is morphic.js, so start reading that and negotiate with Jens about what's still missing that you could take on.  Later when we have a basic structure for the evaluator, you'll be able to help write primitives.

lu9 wrote:

In the next byob there should have a Combo Options! And their contents that should be set with a list. And also color input (if possible)
Isn't that a good idea?

Does "Combo Options" mean dropdown menus?  I agree we should have that for custom block inputs, but I'm guessing not until 4.1 or later because we have so much time pressure.  (It's hard to design right as well as to implement because sometimes you want things like "all the sprites" or "all the costumes" or "all my costumes" etc. so there has to be a way to say those things.)

Yeah, colors as a data type, like Panther.  Maybe in 4.0, we'll have to see how much time we have.  The first task is just to replicate the 3.1 capabilities!

Is it possible for class based oop and prototype based oop to exist in the same environment?

Pecola1 wrote:

WOW! I have never seen any mod developers work so well together, it's like you are all brothers! You don't live near each-other do you?

Jens is in Germany and bharvey is in California. 

Pecola1 wrote:

WOW! I have never seen any mod developers work so well together, it's like you are all brothers! You don't live near each-other do you?

Thanks!  I think it helps a lot that there are only two of us (although we really are going to put fullmoon and nXIII to work very soon) and, umm, don't take this the wrong way, but it helps too that we're adults.  We're pretty ego-free about BYOB, so we can argue without getting mad.  ("Ego-free" doesn't mean that we're not both super proud of BYOB!  I still get a thrill every time I see a block in a speech balloon.)

Even though we're hardly ever awake at the same time, I'm pretty sure that I spend more time talking with Jens by email than I spend talking with anyone else face-to-face!  I feel as if we're brothers.

And, by the way, everyone who hangs out on this forum thread is fantastic; we've had some great ideas and about a trillion bug reports from you guys.  Part of our plan for taking over the world involves teaching our BYOB-based course to high school students (as a new AP CS for non-majors) so it's very reassuring to know that at least some kids get it right away.

(P.S.: I'm Pinky; Jens is the Brain.  )

(P.P.S.  And I get to visit Jens this summer on the way home from my Scandinavia tour!    )

14God wrote:

it doesn't allow much native class syntax like ([obj] is a [class]).

Here you go...



I know this isn't perfect; maybe instead you want to define a class as an object that has children, rather than an object that isn't a child.  It depends on how you envision your object hierarchy.  But I think you'll find that prototyping OOP provides a strict superset of the capabilities of class/instance OOP.

"So why doesn't everyone use it?" you say.  Because people out in the Real World are trying to get vast armies of programmers to write a program together, and they're more than happy to get the complete design of the object hierarchy cast in concrete before anyone's allowed to write any code.  They don't want someone deciding to clone an instance!

Plus, out in the Real World they think the entire universe of OOP languages runs all the way from C++ to Java.   

P.S. I think I was supposed to put a THE BLOCK around that ATTRIBUTE but I'm too tired to make a new picture. 

Jens wrote:

Pecola1 wrote:

WOW! I have never seen any mod developers work so well together, it's like you are all brothers! You don't live near each-other do you?

Ah, how sweet of you, thanks! You've basically nailed our relationship, I really feel like Brian is my big brother, because he teaches me all the stuff I don't know. Plus, Brian's session about procedures at the first Scratch conference in 2008 was the seed for the first BYOB version.

bharvey wrote:

(P.S.: I'm Pinky; Jens is the Brain.  )

On the contrary: I'm the coder, Brian's got the big picture 

bharvey wrote:

(P.P.S.  And I get to visit Jens this summer on the way home from my Scandinavia tour!    )

Can't wait! (Oooh, I gotta start cleaning out those pizza cartons from the nightly hackathons)

Haha, I had no idea, but luckily Youtube does