4 ms·

Scratch is how I first learned programming. I was building increasingly ambitious projects in it, and at some point the editor itself became the main thing I wa

by aspizu 21d ago

Scratch is how I first learned programming. I was building increasingly ambitious projects in it, and at some point the editor itself became the main thing I was fighting. Once a project got to around 10,000 blocks, it could get painfully laggy, and I ended up spending a lot of time engineering around Scratch's limits. That is what eventually led me to build goboscript: https://github.com/aspizu/goboscript https://github.com/aspizu/goboscript I'm one of the programmers who owe their career to Scratch, this year, I joined https://ente.com https://ente.com as a software engineer. Scratch taught me how to code, and perhaps a bit of real-world engineering indirectly.

varun_ch 21d ago
same here! I got into Scratch at the age of 7 and without it (and the Scratch community), I wouldn’t have any career (or even a plan for one). I also worked as an intern on the Scratch team at the Scratch Foundation. I also know that one of the important developers for the Asahi Linux drivers also started on Scratch. I think there’s a lot of real software engineers who started on Scratch (and the Scratch community, which is often overlooked)
psyklic 21d ago
This is what happened with me and BASIC. I had to upgrade to C when my programs became limited by complexity, speed, and difficulties robustly integrating audio.
- bpavuk 21d ago
  same, switched from Scratch to C at age 8, but I only really wanted my programs go fast back then :)
Muhammad523 21d ago
I also learned programming with Scratch first, at around age 11, but i soon left it for Python
saled 20d ago
I think John Carmack was looking for you recently. https://x.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/2094450188911845827 https://x.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/2094450188911845827
Timwi 16d ago
I first learned programming in the 1980s on a C128 by reading the list of BASIC commands in the user manual. I'd say the level of complexity and capability is somewhat comparable to Scratch today. I too ended up spending a lot of time working around the limitations of the system, and I too would say that I owe my career to that. Seems like history repeats itself, or at least somewhat rhymes.

by aspizu 21d ago

varun_ch 21d ago

same here! I got into Scratch at the age of 7 and without it (and the Scratch community), I wouldn’t have any career (or even a plan for one). I also worked as an intern on the Scratch team at the Scratch Foundation. I also know that one of the important developers for the Asahi Linux drivers also started on Scratch. I think there’s a lot of real software engineers who started on Scratch (and the Scratch community, which is often overlooked)

psyklic 21d ago

This is what happened with me and BASIC. I had to upgrade to C when my programs became limited by complexity, speed, and difficulties robustly integrating audio.

bpavuk 21d ago
same, switched from Scratch to C at age 8, but I only really wanted my programs go fast back then :)

Muhammad523 21d ago

I also learned programming with Scratch first, at around age 11, but i soon left it for Python

saled 20d ago

I think John Carmack was looking for you recently. https://x.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/2094450188911845827 https://x.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/2094450188911845827

Timwi 16d ago

I first learned programming in the 1980s on a C128 by reading the list of BASIC commands in the user manual. I'd say the level of complexity and capability is somewhat comparable to Scratch today. I too ended up spending a lot of time working around the limitations of the system, and I too would say that I owe my career to that. Seems like history repeats itself, or at least somewhat rhymes.