It's NUTS how my nephew learns coding with Scratch while I had to figure out BASIC with my big sister.

3 comments

3 Comments

My friend's kid made a little game last week where a cat chases a pizza. Took him like twenty minutes in Scratch with all the colorful blocks. Meanwhile my friend still remembers typing line after line of code from a library book just to make a square move across the screen. Said it feels like the kid is playing with digital Legos while he had to mine the clay to make bricks. The kid just shrugged and said his way was more fun, which is honestly hard to argue with. Makes you wonder what they'll be doing in another ten years.

moore.oscar1mo ago

Those colorful blocks are a great start, but they can hide how things actually work. It's like learning piano by only pressing labeled keys instead of reading sheet music. The kid might find it more fun now, but understanding the real code underneath is what lets you build something complex later on.

caseys5220d ago

Honestly, I saw a tech teacher online say something that stuck with me. He said the blocks are like training wheels. You need them to get going without falling over and getting frustrated. The goal is to ride the bike, not to admire the training wheels. Eventually you take them off. If a kid makes a fun game in twenty minutes, that's a win. It gets them wanting to build more, and that's when you slowly show them the code under the blocks.