Scratch

Actually, I just read http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/papers/NewPathwaysRoboticsLLK.pdf by Mitchel Resnick, and I think I need to think about this a bit more....I like the dramatists way, its not mine, but its like the 'software toys' concept we had at Maxis....though of course I can't wait to play with the code too :-)
Thanks!

Ummm...sorry, didn't mean to imply anything about smalltalk, I just remember it and learned it, along with ops 5, prolog, lisp and forth.....I'm just a old C/C++/Assembly guy ya know....knuth etc, a bit old school, from a c# perspective I suppose :-), Plato terminals were fun.

Jens has done some tutorials for squeak

Paddle2See wrote:

ealbers wrote:

Ummm...sorry, didn't mean to imply anything about smalltalk, I just remember it and learned it, along with ops 5, prolog, lisp and forth.....I'm just a old C/C++/Assembly guy ya know....knuth etc, a bit old school, from a c# perspective I suppose :-), Plato terminals were fun.

YOU feel old???  I'm a FORTRAN IV guy.  It was a big step up to FORTRAN 77 (yay, IF-THEN-ELSE statements!).  Of course, I was an Engineer, not really a computer guy and that is what the programs were written in.  Still are in some cases 

Well. I started on FORTRAN 77, so I'm not quite as ancient as Paddle2See, but I used punch cards as a freshman, and I still have the textbook in my office for fun.

btw: Paddle, I think I just reported your post inadvertently. :p

chalkmarrow wrote:

In general I think there's a need for a board that lies somewhere between the PicoBoard (user friendly and bullet-proof, but allowing only input) and the Arduino (infinitely configurable input and output, but requiring significant electronics knowledge to do anything useful).

I think it would be a terrific challenge to create an implementation of Scratch (or something very close to it) that would produce code that can be downloaded and run on an Arduino type board.  Something similar to what was done by Eric Rosenbaum for Scratch for Second Life (S4SL) where the Scratch interface is used to build Second Life scripts.  However, in this case, the output would be code that actually runs on an Arduino.  With this approach, an Arduino programmed in Scratch can be untethered from the USB port of a PC and run autonomously.

I can imagine the equivalent of "Sprites" for an Arduino being peripherals that gather input or create output.  Peripherals could be LEDs, LCDs, timers, buzzers, switches, light sensors, touch sensors, distance sensors (IR and sonar), motor controllers, serial/SPI/I2C ports, and the myriad other things that can be attached to the I/O ports of an Arduino.

The person using an Arduino-ized Scratch selects the peripherals they want to use and then uses the familiar Scratch blocks to react to input events and product output.  If done with the same care that went into creating Scratch such an environment could make embedded devices and robotics much more accessible to kids and non-programming adults.  Particularly if the end result was targeting a platform as varied and ubiquitous as the Arduino has seem to become.

-Mike