I was housemates with a couple with a kid. The kid learned Scratch first, and made some surprisingly sophisticated apps in that semester (or two).
By now he’s moved on to textual languages (not yet old enough for a career), but Scratch was engaging and gave him a good start.
shwaj
I still see picture books as an introductory path to literacy for kids, but unlike posting fan fiction on AO3, I have never heard a “success story”, where someone credits their early experience with picture books as key to a fulfilling career. Anyone?
burnto
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
My kids grew up on Scratch and still occasionally play games there. It was a nice way to casually introduce them to programming concepts. My oldest is now 16 and an active member of Hack Club, so I'd say Scratch is one of the activities that may have given him the itch.
jawns
Before scratch was popular I was heavily into Game Maker as a teenager (2006-2009). Didn't pick up actual programming again until I got to university and did some Matlab as a part of a math unit which triggered a major shift into CompSci.
The issue was always the barrier to entry and ability to self-teach for real-world programming seemed so high as a kid, especially when you had nobody around you to even point you in the right direction. It seems so obvious now but I'm certain back then googling things was not as useful as it is now, you couldn't just stumble your way into a programming environment.
jasongi
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 programmed in Basic some as a kid but it was programming a MUSH (Amber-MUSH) in grad school that got me hooked and changed career course to programming. Made some great friends too.
eikenberry
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 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.
comments (10)
By now he’s moved on to textual languages (not yet old enough for a career), but Scratch was engaging and gave him a good start.
shwaj
burnto
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
jawns
The issue was always the barrier to entry and ability to self-teach for real-world programming seemed so high as a kid, especially when you had nobody around you to even point you in the right direction. It seems so obvious now but I'm certain back then googling things was not as useful as it is now, you couldn't just stumble your way into a programming environment.
jasongi
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
eikenberry
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
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