i'm missing a "fork", that's a way to tell "create a copy of ____ named ____", so we can keep class instances hidden and create new instances that way, allowing to create objects on demand. im thinking in a game where we can continue creating more enemies to make it harder.
On the other hand, i'm also missing "send signal ___ to ___" allowing to send a message only to one object. It could be done allowing to create new named signals.
The way to create procedures is by sending messages, but I can't send parameters, i'd like that.
in the case of a bouncing ball, it's difficult to say wich way to bounce, because its not know neither in which direction nor where de bounce ocurred.
is scratch going to enter on OLPC? would be great.
cheers
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Hi.
Thanks for the ideas. There are always tradeoffs between useful advanced features (such as cloning or class/instance models) and easy of learning. But we will consider all your suggestions.
The "if on edge, bounce" block changes the x or y component of the sprite's direction to point away from the edge, leaving the other component alone (except when it hits a corner). You can always use "if touching edge" and program your own response to touching the edge. The math is a bit tricky, though, which is why we added "if on edge, bounce".
We are working on a port of Scratch the OLPC XO. We hope to have it ready toward the end of this year.
-- John
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I understand your way of thinking, but i believe that with some changes that dont interfere with the more basics construct you could make it useful to an older/more advanced audience in a wider sense.
may be it could be an advanced section separated from the rest of the commands, (even guarded by an option's checkbox (advanced features on/off) as used in calculators to swap beetween normal and scientific mode), to avoid confusions.
one of the toughest items to learn is the concurrency management, and scrach been multithreaded by nature, it could help the young programmers to take it naturally and not as an late addon.
In other things, i'm missing some other features from logo, as arrays, lists or strings, and maybe it could be cool to have dictionaries.I remember falling in love with them when i first met them in python.
when are you planning to release the source code?, because i'm uruguayan, so we already are deploying XOs and could be nice to be able to tweak it to our thinking process. and enhance the localization part.
cheers, please continue with your excelent work,
Luis
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