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>7yo was making a number guessing game, and to display a two-digit number we had to make two sprites that had 10 "costumes" (0-9) then do modular math to select
by Sirened 4y ago
>7yo was making a number guessing game, and to display a two-digit number we had to make two sprites that had 10 "costumes" (0-9) then do modular math to select the costume for each digit
This, imo, is what makes Scratch a great education platform. It has a couple of very easy to use primitives (such as displaying and moving sprites) and leaves you to build whatever else you need by abstracting things on top of it. This teaches you one of the most foundational programming skills: how to do something complicated with only weird, rudimentary tools.
- Wowfunhappy 4y agoThis is also a good point. Scratch isn't designed to make coding easy so much as conceptually understandable.
- pishpash 4y agoThat's not it, otherwise you'd make the little ones play with a Turing machine.
- space_fountain 4y agoTuring machines are about being mathematically tractable right not about understanding right?
- tmaly 4y agoI just think there are so many other forms of distraction today. Young kids are carrying around cell phones, texting their friends. It’s that or they are doing something on Tiktok. They don’t have time to hack like that anymore.
- BenHerbst 4y agoYes true for most people ( I am 13, Started programming in Java with 10 ) but some also do this other stuff. Like I installed ubports on my second phone today ( Writing this on it )
- herewulf 4y agoNever heard of ubports. Looks interesting. A 40 year old just learned something from a 13 year old. If this is how you're spending your free time, then you have a bright future ahead of you. Keep it up!
- koide 4y agoYou should consider this interaction as an opportunity to also revisit your ageism. I'm all for encouraging young people, and OP seems a really bright 13 years old person, for sure. But try to keep condescension out of the way. As anybody with children can tell you, we all learn from them all the time. It's not something surprising.
- andybak 4y agoMaybe don't throw -isms around so lightly, eh?
- koide 4y agoI find hard to interpret "A 40 yo learned something from a 13 yo" in a non ageist way. Seems that people disagree, but nobody has provided a counterpoint. Actually, the comment in question would have been perfect encouragement in my view just by removing that phrase.