It's not always your first exposure that you later identify as a catalyst.
I'm an American that took a C++ class in Europe when I was 13 (forward thinking school in retrospect). But when asked, I usually say scripting RS bots was what got me into the field, because I had fun and it was more memorable.
But would I have chosen to do that had I no idea what coding was? Maybe not...
kylecazar
I used the lego mindstorms environment (scratch-based) way back.
It was quite excellent, along with stuff like Clik n' Play. Basically "event driven" + "blocks so you can't have syntax errors and other silliness" was very good for me.
rtpg
I can say it has for me. I spent a couple years on scratch as a kid before moving on to other languages, and it helped me really get into programming.
My hobby projects are almost always video games to this day, partially because of it. I even built my first compiler/interpreter on there before I knew what those words meant, and got exposed to lots of math that I otherwise wouldn't have seen until high school. Being able to easily discover what others were doing, and learn from their projects, helped me out a lot.
It will always be special to me, as I'm sure BASIC and such are to others.
jim-works
Scratch's problem is ecosystem. It develops UX for children who are still early to the keyboard but children learn so fast, and at some point they get past the high friction stage and end up in a desert.
threatofrain
I dunno about fulfilling career, but I have to admit that I often use BlockSCAD:
I spent my childhood using crappy 4K versions of BASIC. Love my career. Still get to do everything from embedded nonsense to database architecture.
My son started on Scratch, then Minecraft, and 15 years later he's working on designing jigs in parametric CAD for space lasers. I'm sure he'll be fine.
zulux
I think there's a misplaced focus on "first" experiences being optimal in some way.
Whether a kid is going to take to programming or not is pretty unlikely to change based on whether they're introduced to a block-based or text-based language, or whether it's object oriented or functional (the push for objects-first has mostly died off, but I still see remnants of it in various curricula).
If it's got a few basics like conditionals, iteration, structured grammar, etc. it will be plenty to give students the flavor of what programming is about.
The better criteria, in my mind, are "does it allow you to make/do something interesting?" and "how easily does it lead into the next level of learning?".
scarecrw
Yes, I credit Scratch as leading to my fulfilling career. I made so many games and simulations! Spending hours over the summer creating operating systems, animations, puzzles, and so on.
This was when Scratch was still a downloaded program. The community was also really encouraging back then - you'd see adults and kids commenting on new projects and cheering people on, remixing, and sharing knowledge.
_caw
not scratch, but GameMaker visual programming was the first exposure to programming I could understand.
comments (9)
I'm an American that took a C++ class in Europe when I was 13 (forward thinking school in retrospect). But when asked, I usually say scripting RS bots was what got me into the field, because I had fun and it was more memorable.
But would I have chosen to do that had I no idea what coding was? Maybe not...
kylecazar
It was quite excellent, along with stuff like Clik n' Play. Basically "event driven" + "blocks so you can't have syntax errors and other silliness" was very good for me.
rtpg
My hobby projects are almost always video games to this day, partially because of it. I even built my first compiler/interpreter on there before I knew what those words meant, and got exposed to lots of math that I otherwise wouldn't have seen until high school. Being able to easily discover what others were doing, and learn from their projects, helped me out a lot.
It will always be special to me, as I'm sure BASIC and such are to others.
jim-works
threatofrain
https://www.blockscad3d.com/editor/
to rough out designs as well as simple algorithms for OpenSCAD and ultimately, PythonSCAD for my current project:
https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview
WillAdams
My son started on Scratch, then Minecraft, and 15 years later he's working on designing jigs in parametric CAD for space lasers. I'm sure he'll be fine.
zulux
Whether a kid is going to take to programming or not is pretty unlikely to change based on whether they're introduced to a block-based or text-based language, or whether it's object oriented or functional (the push for objects-first has mostly died off, but I still see remnants of it in various curricula).
If it's got a few basics like conditionals, iteration, structured grammar, etc. it will be plenty to give students the flavor of what programming is about.
The better criteria, in my mind, are "does it allow you to make/do something interesting?" and "how easily does it lead into the next level of learning?".
scarecrw
This was when Scratch was still a downloaded program. The community was also really encouraging back then - you'd see adults and kids commenting on new projects and cheering people on, remixing, and sharing knowledge.
_caw
jjmarr