When I first began to use Scratch, I simply used the tutorial to make “First Program,” which was really just an introduction to adding sound and movement to a program. This was straightforward and it was not difficult, but it also left many questions unanswered, like the question of how to stop the program. To learn more I played with remixing a program into a game called “Danger Maze.” I ran into the difficulty the first time by trying to animate the bat. Just trying to get it to display a mirrored image of itself so it would look like it had turned around was frustrating. After playing with the rotation commands, I finally realized I would need a new costume to display when I wanted the bat to turn. After that, it was pretty simple.
The major different with this and other languages like Python is in the way that a person inputs data. The mouse clicking and drag-and-drop method is very simple and more intuitive than even the assembly language of text-based program languages. Assembly language is a “textual human-understandable representation of a machine language's 0's and 1's” (Vahid & Lysecky. 2017). However, I might not even call Scratch a language at all as much as a program that lets humans make simple programs without a language.
It is obvious that Scratch is a great learning environment, but it is far too limited for anything more than simple Flash animations and games. The input is limited to the bank of formulas, whereas C++ or Python seems more powerful for those who learn the language.
By the way, here is Danger Maze! Enjoy:
References
Scratch Program - “First Program” Retrieved from https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/238987555/
Scratch Program - “Danger Maze” Retrieved from https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/238991184/
Comments