Building from Scratch
Scratch is fun! I’m familiar with different types of programming. I started learning to code using Visual Basic. I enjoyed the drag and drop features that VB used and felt it was a great way to get started learning how to code and Scratch felt very similar to those experiences. However, I quickly found out how rusty I am coding in this format. I had no idea how to start. At first, I wanted to make a tic tac toe game but found it difficult to define the area where the program would place the Xs and Os. Instead, I scrapped that game and created a game where the user would try to guess the answer to different questions a wizard would ask. I had trouble understanding how the program would run if-then statements. I found troubleshooting those statements difficult as well. I’m familiar with being able to comment a line of code for the program to skip it, with Scratch I couldn’t figure how to skip a line of code unless I pulled the whole line out which would pull other parts of the code away as well. But, like most things, practice made perfect. I watched a few YouTube videos describing how to create if-then statements or repeat statements and figured out how to make the program work correctly.
I’ve always enjoyed the debugging side of code writing. I find it thrilling to see something break and figure out how to fix it. Programming with Scratch was no exception. One issue I had was counting the number of times the user would guess and totaling the guesses up for a final total at the end, sharing that number with the user. While running the program, the total guess count would increase two times with each guess. Through some handy debugging, I found that I had added the command too many times which was incorrectly increasing the number of guesses. This experience taught me that even in something that teaches kids to code, mistakes could easily happen and I need to slow down when putting the code together.
When working through the programming exercises in our textbook, called
Computing Technology for All by Vahid and Lysecky, I found the machine language and assembly language difficult to understand. The program instructions didn’t flow in a readable way as the Python exercise did. I’m in the process of learning Python and found both the generations and election years exercises enjoyable. I thought to be able to see the code visually the way Scratch showed it made it much easier to understand, though programming languages like Python offer much more customization. I wanted to concatenate the last phrase showing the user how many guesses it took them, but I was unable to and had to use multiple “say’ boxes to achieve something that one line of code would perform in Python.
I found Scratch to be the easiest language to use so far, only because all the code commands were right there at my fingertips. I enjoy the flexibility and customization that Python offers, it’s difficult to remember all the different commands though. Each language has its own use though. Scratch and other drag and drop programs like it are great tools for beginners learning how to code and understanding concepts. High-level languages like Python are for developers creating complex applications. Machine and assembly language are for electronic devices that need a very basic program since they lack high-performance CPUs. I feel that the most popular type of language would be the high-level ones like Python and Javascript. These programming languages are used in almost everything we interact with in our daily lives.
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