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I don't love graphical programming environments like this and Scratch and I can't quite put my finger on why I find them so unattractive. A big part of it is t

I don't love graphical programming environments like this and Scratch and I can't quite put my finger on why I find them so unattractive. A big part of it is that you can, to some degree, learn programming from this. But you absolutely cannot learn software engineering from this.

r_lee 15d ago
from someone who can remember how they even got into programming: it's because this is BS and just a toy, it's got no connection to the real world. from the angle of someone trying to make some toy to teach programming, maybe in their head it's like: oh this is so simple and easy it should work perfectly for teaching but from my experience, most of my learning came from "whats this?" "how do i make a thing like this?" this doesn't provide a way to accomplish that or to promote curiosity I think same applies to basic CS courses teaching bits and bytes, it's not really useful to know what bits and bytes are if you don't understand what they're even used for or why you should know what they are however, this is just my subjective point of view, maybe it differs for others.
- deleted 15d ago
  [deleted]
- DonHopkins 15d ago
  Fair that your path worked differently for you. But "no connection to the real world" is hard to sustain once you look at what people actually build with Snap!/Scratch. The ecosystem is full of bridges to physical stuff: Cameras, microphones, audio, pen plotters, 3D (BeetleBlocks). Snap! 12.1 (video from a few days ago) adds body-language recognition, Bauhaus-style shape compositions, first-class Processes, translation updates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID7wYxzHUAc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID7wYxzHUAc Arduino / micro:bit / boards (Snap4Arduino, MicroBlocks, many hardware libraries): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ltzlzk_zkys&list=PL5OeDsbY1ElLa5FvQoejTFddsVZpp8Nah https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ltzlzk_zkys&list=PL5OeDsbY1E... Robots (Finch, Hummingbird, Lego NXT, drones): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_0EqIbTlkk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_0EqIbTlkk Sewing machines (TurtleStitch -- embroidery from blocks; one of my favorites): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6ra5ThxkrE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6ra5ThxkrE Web APIs and IoT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_P7MoBG250 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_P7MoBG250 ML/AI and digital fabrication (Ken Kahn's eCraft2Learn): https://project.ecraft2learn.eu/ https://project.ecraft2learn.eu/ The "what's this? how do I make a thing like this?" curiosity you describe is exactly how a lot of people get pulled in -- making something move, blink, sing, or stitch on a machine they can see, rather than learning abstract syntax first. Blocks are the on-ramp; the project is the motivation. Different audience than yours, maybe. But "just a toy walled off from reality" undersells what this community has been doing for decades. Snap! also teaches real computer science at college level while staying accessible to kids -- not a stripped-down kiddie language. Brian Harvey: "Snap! is Scheme disguised as Scratch" (though he notes the original intent was closer to Logo disguised as Scratch): https://forum.snap.berkeley.edu/t/hygienic-macros/3258/6 https://forum.snap.berkeley.edu/t/hygienic-macros/3258/6 Re alanbernstein's point about keyboard vs GUI: Snap! is not keyboard-hostile. It has a keyboard editor for scripts -- build and edit whole scripts without the mouse, block search from the keyboard, infix arithmetic expressions typed left-to-right. Manual chapter: https://docs.snap.berkeley.edu/user-interface-elements/#sec-keyboard-editing https://docs.snap.berkeley.edu/user-interface-elements/#sec-... Demo (typing formulas from the keyboard): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahHAl3p3gEU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahHAl3p3gEU Full IDE accessibility (screen readers etc.) is still a work in progress; Jens and Brian document what's there now: https://github.com/jmoenig/Snap/issues/1498 https://github.com/jmoenig/Snap/issues/1498
  - r_lee 14d ago
    I guess I just can't relate to it, because I was fascinated with the computing itself, not just getting from A to B as quickly as possible so it wasn't the project that was the motivation, it was figuring out how to do it for real, and getting closer to expertise in programming for example the TurtleStitch, I don't know how to say this exactly, but to me it doesn't strike as something that'd interest people who want to get into programming, but is more like a way to showcase how to do machined embroidery in an accessible way I might be totally wrong, but my problem seems to be that a lot of this is just about showing off the capabilities of Snap, but it's not really something I would've engaged with for example? like almost as if the ecosystem simply serves to show off Snap and thus misses the mark? like Snap doesn't really provide a way to understand how stuff is actually done except for maybe simple logic. So I don't see how it'd be very useful for e.g. learning CS when it's not really something you'd see in the real world, i.e. you're learning a learning platform and some basic concepts I guess my point is like, if it's not really something that's used in the real world, unlike say JS or Python, why use it instead of getting up to speed in a real language? again, it could be that I simply don't get it, or that I'm not the target audience, but I feel like there's a reason why these haven't really taken off, and IMO there's no reason why they would need to, because they serve a very specific niche
    - DonHopkins 14d ago
      [dead]
      - rmunn 14d ago
        Where the heck did the sudden vitriol come from? I went through the HN comments of the person you're replying to and found nothing like the kind of thing you're replying to in the first several pages. If he said something months ago that you're bringing up, you might want to link to it, because at it stands it feels like you just suddenly started ranting about politics in the middle of a conversation about teaching kids to code. Which is... kind of offputting, you know? Could we please try to follow the guidelines and not have flamewars and partisan dispute? Especially ones that seem to spring up out of nowhere, reviving conversations that are months old? I'm here to learn about cool new projects; if I want to read about politics or personal drama I have pretty much the entire rest of the Internet to do so.
- ModernMech 14d ago
  Here's how teaching kids goes without scratch: "This is python, we use it to do professional development work. Here's VS code, we use it to do professional development work. Let's learn them." 6 year olds: "Okay!" Proceeds to mangle whitespace, variable names, scope, indexing, ==, forgets :, doesn't understand what def is, even after they get all that the program is basically "hello world" print to console. 6 year olds: "Programming is hard and frustrating with little payoff, I don't want to do this anymore" The one 6 year who who will grow up to be a greybeard sysadmin "This stuff is great! I can't wait to learn more!" Teachers: "I have no idea what I'm doing, the devs keep saying how Python is supposed to be easy and it's built for learning, but I'm just as confused as the kids." -- Here's how teaching kids goes with scratch: "This is scratch, you snape these colored shapes together and they do things like make this character move" 6 year olds: "Okay!" Proceeds to make games and stories with graphics, sounds and interaction, which they share with their friends, fully editable and runnable in a web environment with zero setup: https://scratch.mit.edu https://scratch.mit.edu 6 year olds: "Wow programming is fun! I can't wait to learn more!" The one 6 year who who will grow up to be a greybeard sysadmin "I agree this stuff is great! I can't wait to learn more!" Teachers: "It wasn't hard to get up and running with scratch, it's very easy to teach and I get it."
crushinator 15d ago
You also can't learn to be a great novelist from the alphabet song, but it has its place!
jonplackett 15d ago
I have the same gripe and I think it’s just simply that when you are used to being able to just write code, everything else feels like it’s in the way. Visual coding is a pain to change and move around quickly. It’s just clutter ultimately - if you know how to actually code.
lern_too_spel 15d ago
This supports making your own higher order functions. You absolutely can learn software engineering from this. What you can't do is get syntax errors, which makes teaching a classroom of kids by yourself intractable.
- lern_too_spel 14d ago
  I skimmed the manual. It's more powerful than I thought. You can do metaprogramming directly in the language, which will deconstruct blocks into lists. It's basically Scheme as blocks,
alanbernstein 15d ago
If you appreciate when keyboard interaction gets added to a GUI, then you might think of a graphical language as the opposite, as it essentially removes keyboard interaction from what is normally a text-based system.
- gs17 15d ago
  Snap does have a limited keyboard mode (shift click), but it's not really as good as "real" IDE.
- Benjamin_Dobell 14d ago
  Not based on an official Blockly implementation. But you can add keyboard navigation to Blockly(-like) scripting reasonably easily: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITWSL5lTLig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITWSL5lTLig The video above shows keyboard, but the main motivation for the key-based navigation was actually gamepad.
JoeOfTexas 15d ago
LEGO created NXT-G for programming their Mindstorm NXT. It has since, in my opinion, been the best graphical programming I've seen to date. It did have a slight learning curve, but 5th graders were competing just fine against high schoolers haha.
lubujackson 15d ago
I would love to see the opposite emerge, a programming environment focused on teaching architecture, security, separation of concerns, etc. All while letting LLMs deal with the fussy programming bits. The script is already flipping, with kids making software using AI but they can only fumble forward inch by inch while burning tokens. It would be great to introduce programming in the way it functions in the workplace - we want to make a Mario clone, start with the goal, hammer out the elements to a certain fidelity then let the AI cook.
- diskzero 15d ago
  This would be so exciting. The implementation language would be less of a concern, but it worth wondering about... Would you use Rust, Racket, Lisp, Clojure, etc? I had a lot of fun teaching adults to program using DrRacket and didn't focus on the language as much as the concepts you mentioned above. They ended up being easily able to move to Javascript, Swift, and others at the end of the course.
poly2it 15d ago
I learned to program from block programming, starting out when I was 12. I'm now a full-time developer and funded startup founder. You absolutely can learn complex concepts from simple primitives, and there is a large underground community pushing the limits of languages like Scratch. See for example Linux running on RISC-V running on Scratch: https://turbowarp.org/1201938491 https://turbowarp.org/1201938491
- DrewADesign 15d ago
  In my experience, there’s no better way to learn more complex programming techniques or tools than running into a brick wall with the simple tools you’re familiar with, spending a ton of time on an unreasonably irritating solution, only to realize that you’re running into a classic [n] problem and some clever person figured out a simple logical trick to address it. I mean, it can be enraging but that knowledge tends to stick. Though I doubt that happens much anymore.
  - unleaded 13d ago
    Couldn't agree more. To add on I think you can learn so much by doing something incredibly stupid you're really not supposed to in an intentionally constrained environment (in a good way, like the grandparent comment). The sort of absurd things that get posted here occasionally and get a few commenters genuinely annoyed that they're doing that with their time instead of curing cancer. Plus it tends to be easier than it looks. (I think some people have caught on to this and found out that Claude is pretty good at it.. not sure what the point of that is but whatever)
cycomachead 14d ago
To some extent, that’s not the point. You don’t need to learn all of CS in one tool. That said, I think you can learn good fundamentals of SWE with tools like Snap!. You can still learn testing, design patterns, working with APIs, modularity etc. No it’s not a distributed system, and perhaps the biggest pain point is collaboration is tricky. But still you can learn a ton of cool things without going that far into CS. :)

r_lee 15d ago

from someone who can remember how they even got into programming: it's because this is BS and just a toy, it's got no connection to the real world. from the angle of someone trying to make some toy to teach programming, maybe in their head it's like: oh this is so simple and easy it should work perfectly for teaching but from my experience, most of my learning came from "whats this?" "how do i make a thing like this?" this doesn't provide a way to accomplish that or to promote curiosity I think same applies to basic CS courses teaching bits and bytes, it's not really useful to know what bits and bytes are if you don't understand what they're even used for or why you should know what they are however, this is just my subjective point of view, maybe it differs for others.

deleted 15d ago
[deleted]
DonHopkins 15d ago
Fair that your path worked differently for you. But "no connection to the real world" is hard to sustain once you look at what people actually build with Snap!/Scratch. The ecosystem is full of bridges to physical stuff: Cameras, microphones, audio, pen plotters, 3D (BeetleBlocks). Snap! 12.1 (video from a few days ago) adds body-language recognition, Bauhaus-style shape compositions, first-class Processes, translation updates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID7wYxzHUAc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID7wYxzHUAc Arduino / micro:bit / boards (Snap4Arduino, MicroBlocks, many hardware libraries): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ltzlzk_zkys&list=PL5OeDsbY1ElLa5FvQoejTFddsVZpp8Nah https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ltzlzk_zkys&list=PL5OeDsbY1E... Robots (Finch, Hummingbird, Lego NXT, drones): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_0EqIbTlkk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_0EqIbTlkk Sewing machines (TurtleStitch -- embroidery from blocks; one of my favorites): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6ra5ThxkrE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6ra5ThxkrE Web APIs and IoT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_P7MoBG250 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_P7MoBG250 ML/AI and digital fabrication (Ken Kahn's eCraft2Learn): https://project.ecraft2learn.eu/ https://project.ecraft2learn.eu/ The "what's this? how do I make a thing like this?" curiosity you describe is exactly how a lot of people get pulled in -- making something move, blink, sing, or stitch on a machine they can see, rather than learning abstract syntax first. Blocks are the on-ramp; the project is the motivation. Different audience than yours, maybe. But "just a toy walled off from reality" undersells what this community has been doing for decades. Snap! also teaches real computer science at college level while staying accessible to kids -- not a stripped-down kiddie language. Brian Harvey: "Snap! is Scheme disguised as Scratch" (though he notes the original intent was closer to Logo disguised as Scratch): https://forum.snap.berkeley.edu/t/hygienic-macros/3258/6 https://forum.snap.berkeley.edu/t/hygienic-macros/3258/6 Re alanbernstein's point about keyboard vs GUI: Snap! is not keyboard-hostile. It has a keyboard editor for scripts -- build and edit whole scripts without the mouse, block search from the keyboard, infix arithmetic expressions typed left-to-right. Manual chapter: https://docs.snap.berkeley.edu/user-interface-elements/#sec-keyboard-editing https://docs.snap.berkeley.edu/user-interface-elements/#sec-... Demo (typing formulas from the keyboard): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahHAl3p3gEU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahHAl3p3gEU Full IDE accessibility (screen readers etc.) is still a work in progress; Jens and Brian document what's there now: https://github.com/jmoenig/Snap/issues/1498 https://github.com/jmoenig/Snap/issues/1498
- r_lee 14d ago
  I guess I just can't relate to it, because I was fascinated with the computing itself, not just getting from A to B as quickly as possible so it wasn't the project that was the motivation, it was figuring out how to do it for real, and getting closer to expertise in programming for example the TurtleStitch, I don't know how to say this exactly, but to me it doesn't strike as something that'd interest people who want to get into programming, but is more like a way to showcase how to do machined embroidery in an accessible way I might be totally wrong, but my problem seems to be that a lot of this is just about showing off the capabilities of Snap, but it's not really something I would've engaged with for example? like almost as if the ecosystem simply serves to show off Snap and thus misses the mark? like Snap doesn't really provide a way to understand how stuff is actually done except for maybe simple logic. So I don't see how it'd be very useful for e.g. learning CS when it's not really something you'd see in the real world, i.e. you're learning a learning platform and some basic concepts I guess my point is like, if it's not really something that's used in the real world, unlike say JS or Python, why use it instead of getting up to speed in a real language? again, it could be that I simply don't get it, or that I'm not the target audience, but I feel like there's a reason why these haven't really taken off, and IMO there's no reason why they would need to, because they serve a very specific niche
  - DonHopkins 14d ago
    [dead]
    - rmunn 14d ago
      Where the heck did the sudden vitriol come from? I went through the HN comments of the person you're replying to and found nothing like the kind of thing you're replying to in the first several pages. If he said something months ago that you're bringing up, you might want to link to it, because at it stands it feels like you just suddenly started ranting about politics in the middle of a conversation about teaching kids to code. Which is... kind of offputting, you know? Could we please try to follow the guidelines and not have flamewars and partisan dispute? Especially ones that seem to spring up out of nowhere, reviving conversations that are months old? I'm here to learn about cool new projects; if I want to read about politics or personal drama I have pretty much the entire rest of the Internet to do so.
ModernMech 14d ago
Here's how teaching kids goes without scratch: "This is python, we use it to do professional development work. Here's VS code, we use it to do professional development work. Let's learn them." 6 year olds: "Okay!" Proceeds to mangle whitespace, variable names, scope, indexing, ==, forgets :, doesn't understand what def is, even after they get all that the program is basically "hello world" print to console. 6 year olds: "Programming is hard and frustrating with little payoff, I don't want to do this anymore" The one 6 year who who will grow up to be a greybeard sysadmin "This stuff is great! I can't wait to learn more!" Teachers: "I have no idea what I'm doing, the devs keep saying how Python is supposed to be easy and it's built for learning, but I'm just as confused as the kids." -- Here's how teaching kids goes with scratch: "This is scratch, you snape these colored shapes together and they do things like make this character move" 6 year olds: "Okay!" Proceeds to make games and stories with graphics, sounds and interaction, which they share with their friends, fully editable and runnable in a web environment with zero setup: https://scratch.mit.edu https://scratch.mit.edu 6 year olds: "Wow programming is fun! I can't wait to learn more!" The one 6 year who who will grow up to be a greybeard sysadmin "I agree this stuff is great! I can't wait to learn more!" Teachers: "It wasn't hard to get up and running with scratch, it's very easy to teach and I get it."

crushinator 15d ago

You also can't learn to be a great novelist from the alphabet song, but it has its place!

jonplackett 15d ago

I have the same gripe and I think it’s just simply that when you are used to being able to just write code, everything else feels like it’s in the way. Visual coding is a pain to change and move around quickly. It’s just clutter ultimately - if you know how to actually code.

lern_too_spel 15d ago

This supports making your own higher order functions. You absolutely can learn software engineering from this. What you can't do is get syntax errors, which makes teaching a classroom of kids by yourself intractable.

lern_too_spel 14d ago
I skimmed the manual. It's more powerful than I thought. You can do metaprogramming directly in the language, which will deconstruct blocks into lists. It's basically Scheme as blocks,

alanbernstein 15d ago

If you appreciate when keyboard interaction gets added to a GUI, then you might think of a graphical language as the opposite, as it essentially removes keyboard interaction from what is normally a text-based system.

gs17 15d ago
Snap does have a limited keyboard mode (shift click), but it's not really as good as "real" IDE.
Benjamin_Dobell 14d ago
Not based on an official Blockly implementation. But you can add keyboard navigation to Blockly(-like) scripting reasonably easily: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITWSL5lTLig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITWSL5lTLig The video above shows keyboard, but the main motivation for the key-based navigation was actually gamepad.

JoeOfTexas 15d ago

LEGO created NXT-G for programming their Mindstorm NXT. It has since, in my opinion, been the best graphical programming I've seen to date. It did have a slight learning curve, but 5th graders were competing just fine against high schoolers haha.

lubujackson 15d ago

I would love to see the opposite emerge, a programming environment focused on teaching architecture, security, separation of concerns, etc. All while letting LLMs deal with the fussy programming bits. The script is already flipping, with kids making software using AI but they can only fumble forward inch by inch while burning tokens. It would be great to introduce programming in the way it functions in the workplace - we want to make a Mario clone, start with the goal, hammer out the elements to a certain fidelity then let the AI cook.

diskzero 15d ago
This would be so exciting. The implementation language would be less of a concern, but it worth wondering about... Would you use Rust, Racket, Lisp, Clojure, etc? I had a lot of fun teaching adults to program using DrRacket and didn't focus on the language as much as the concepts you mentioned above. They ended up being easily able to move to Javascript, Swift, and others at the end of the course.

poly2it 15d ago

I learned to program from block programming, starting out when I was 12. I'm now a full-time developer and funded startup founder. You absolutely can learn complex concepts from simple primitives, and there is a large underground community pushing the limits of languages like Scratch. See for example Linux running on RISC-V running on Scratch: https://turbowarp.org/1201938491 https://turbowarp.org/1201938491

DrewADesign 15d ago
In my experience, there’s no better way to learn more complex programming techniques or tools than running into a brick wall with the simple tools you’re familiar with, spending a ton of time on an unreasonably irritating solution, only to realize that you’re running into a classic [n] problem and some clever person figured out a simple logical trick to address it. I mean, it can be enraging but that knowledge tends to stick. Though I doubt that happens much anymore.
- unleaded 13d ago
  Couldn't agree more. To add on I think you can learn so much by doing something incredibly stupid you're really not supposed to in an intentionally constrained environment (in a good way, like the grandparent comment). The sort of absurd things that get posted here occasionally and get a few commenters genuinely annoyed that they're doing that with their time instead of curing cancer. Plus it tends to be easier than it looks. (I think some people have caught on to this and found out that Claude is pretty good at it.. not sure what the point of that is but whatever)

cycomachead 14d ago

To some extent, that’s not the point. You don’t need to learn all of CS in one tool. That said, I think you can learn good fundamentals of SWE with tools like Snap!. You can still learn testing, design patterns, working with APIs, modularity etc. No it’s not a distributed system, and perhaps the biggest pain point is collaboration is tricky. But still you can learn a ton of cool things without going that far into CS. :)