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Scratch has succeeded in the way that counts most - building community. However I tried to help my son to write some stuff with it and found it very hard and u

Scratch has succeeded in the way that counts most - building community. However I tried to help my son to write some stuff with it and found it very hard and unintuitive to get stuff done. There are other, similar systems that are MUCH better for programming, such as Construct3 https://www.construct.net/ https://www.construct.net/ and Snap https://snap.berkeley.edu/ https://snap.berkeley.edu/ In a way it's very disappointing that such a difficult to program system has become the default tool for teaching kids to program. Also a shout out to CodeCombat - that's also a great way to teach kids very advanced underlying programming concepts whilst completely hiding all the complexity. Also try https://www.microstudio.dev https://www.microstudio.dev

Wowfunhappy 4y ago
What do you like better about Snap? At a quick glance, it looks almost exactly like Scratch 2.0 (an older version).
- andrewstuart 4y ago
  Snap is the closest conceptually to Scratch. I can't recall why I thought it was much better but that was the conclusion I came to when I reviewed them both a few years back.
- Retr0id 4y ago
  The "killer feature" of Snap is the ability to define functions that return a value. In Scratch, you can't do that. Functions ("custom blocks") are just procedures that may-or-may-not mutate global state - This makes it hard to build up abstractions, etc. Scratch effectively mandates that you write spaghetti code.
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    > The "killer feature" of Snap is the ability to define functions that return a value. In Scratch, you can't do that. Ah, I see now. Yeah, Scratch really should let you make custom "oval blocks" that return values...
  - andrewstuart 4y ago
    My vague recollection is there was alot more advantages too.
TomGullen 4y ago
I'm one of the founders of Construct 3 - thanks for mentioning us! We see that after scratch lots of schools go straight to coding raw python, we feel Construct 3 can more naturally provide the transition from Scratch to coding and are having a lot of success in schools for this reason. Construct 3 allows you to write Javascript files, but also uniquely write lines of Javascript into event blocks so you get to write your first lines of Javascript in a more familiar environment.
- andrewstuart 4y ago
  Construct3 isn't just for kids - it's capable of making "real" games. I did a little fun coding on it and it's really great - I recommend Construct3 to anyone wanting to make a simple game with kids or a sophisticated game. Construct 3 is miles ahead of Scratch - really not even a comparison.

Wowfunhappy 4y ago

What do you like better about Snap? At a quick glance, it looks almost exactly like Scratch 2.0 (an older version).

andrewstuart 4y ago
Snap is the closest conceptually to Scratch. I can't recall why I thought it was much better but that was the conclusion I came to when I reviewed them both a few years back.
Retr0id 4y ago
The "killer feature" of Snap is the ability to define functions that return a value. In Scratch, you can't do that. Functions ("custom blocks") are just procedures that may-or-may-not mutate global state - This makes it hard to build up abstractions, etc. Scratch effectively mandates that you write spaghetti code.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  > The "killer feature" of Snap is the ability to define functions that return a value. In Scratch, you can't do that. Ah, I see now. Yeah, Scratch really should let you make custom "oval blocks" that return values...
- andrewstuart 4y ago
  My vague recollection is there was alot more advantages too.

TomGullen 4y ago

I'm one of the founders of Construct 3 - thanks for mentioning us! We see that after scratch lots of schools go straight to coding raw python, we feel Construct 3 can more naturally provide the transition from Scratch to coding and are having a lot of success in schools for this reason. Construct 3 allows you to write Javascript files, but also uniquely write lines of Javascript into event blocks so you get to write your first lines of Javascript in a more familiar environment.

andrewstuart 4y ago
Construct3 isn't just for kids - it's capable of making "real" games. I did a little fun coding on it and it's really great - I recommend Construct3 to anyone wanting to make a simple game with kids or a sophisticated game. Construct 3 is miles ahead of Scratch - really not even a comparison.