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1. Mike Gerwitz (mikegerwitz)'s status on Saturday, 06-May-2017 06:59:09 UTC Mike Gerwitz
   I've been looking into #Scratch a bit more and am intrigued by some of the design decisions. I like really like some useful principles (like event-based message passing between sprites) that relate to "normal" programming, but there's also aspects that are unique to the environment, like pixel-level collision detection between two arbitrary colors. So you can draw a maze on a background image with, say, black, and detect when the sprite is touching black, and do something. That's pretty cool, and let me make a maze game pretty quickly. And can simplify logic if you have, say, color-based teams.
   
   Just exploring what I can do with my son and figuring out how to be a bit more reasonable in my abstractions for a 5yo while still eventually demonstrating the real-world concern of proper abstractions / separation of concerns and how it relates to maintainability. Teaching adults is one thing; kids are a new adventure for me.
   
   I'm stuck on 1.x because 2.x requires flash. There's a v3 under development that looks pretty cool and will be HTML5-based; looking forward to that!
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   • Chris Bowdon 🇬🇧🇪🇺 (cbowdon)'s status on Saturday, 06-May-2017 16:12:25 UTC Chris Bowdon 🇬🇧🇪🇺

     in reply to

     @mikegerwitz Are you just starting now with your 5yo? Is he enjoying it? I'd love my son to get into this, but I fear he's too young (3).

   • Chris Bowdon 🇬🇧🇪🇺 (cbowdon)'s status on Saturday, 06-May-2017 16:26:11 UTC Chris Bowdon 🇬🇧🇪🇺

     in reply to

     @mikegerwitz ah, nvm. Just looked a bit deeper at Scratch and it's not quite as pictorial as I thought. Defoe too much for a 3-4yo

   • Mike Gerwitz (mikegerwitz)'s status on Saturday, 06-May-2017 16:30:59 UTC Mike Gerwitz

     in reply to

     • Chris Bowdon 🇬🇧🇪🇺
     @cbowdon I did just start and we haven't spent more than a couple hours on it so far. I made the mistake of (re)introducing him to Minetest at the same time, so he's mostly been doing that so far.
     
     I do have a 3yo as well that has been opening Scratch because he enjoys putting various sprites in the scene, and he'll ask me to do some of the things I did with my older one, like have them chase another sprite and say "ouch!", or make sounds, etc. And I'll show him some other things. But he's interested in the result, not how to do it. He wants to help with the blocks and typing, but that's just to be involved; he doesn't grok any of it.
     
     So I think it's entertaining to a 3yo, but it'll be a while before I see whether him experiencing it now will make him more easily get into programming with it in the future, or if he'll already be sick of it by then.
   • Chris Bowdon 🇬🇧🇪🇺 (cbowdon)'s status on Saturday, 06-May-2017 16:37:27 UTC Chris Bowdon 🇬🇧🇪🇺

     in reply to

     @mikegerwitz thank you for the detailed reply. :) I'll have to hold on then. At least by the time my son is ready it will probably be non-Flash.

     In the meantime perhaps the best thing to encourage is lego/duplo.

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   • Mike Gerwitz (mikegerwitz)'s status on Saturday, 06-May-2017 21:21:24 UTC Mike Gerwitz

     in reply to

     • Chris Bowdon 🇬🇧🇪🇺
     @cbowdon I'm using version 1.x; 2.x is flash-based, as you mentioned, whereas earlier versions are free/libre desktop programs. If you have a Debian-based GNU/Linux system, it's probably in your package repository.
     Chris Bowdon 🇬🇧🇪🇺 likes this.