Scratch gets a lot of hate with semi-experienced programmers (the kind to browse this sub) because of its simplicity, but it's actually really good. It teaches you basic programming concepts without all of the complexity of other programming languages.
I remember back in school, some of the students in my computer science classes didn't understand the basic concepts of programming: variables, loops, functions, etc. and programming is 90% logic and problem-solving.
You can't teach programming by teaching the syntax of a language, you have to teach logic. If you know one language, figuring out another is going to be easy because most of the things are the same, the only difference is the syntax.
All: if you ever notice anything like this and have a minute to let us know at hn@ycombinator.com, we'd really appreciate it. I only saw this by change.
What a bummer. Open, anonymous, and free forums are some of the most interesting places on the internet. this profit-motivated antisocial shit makes me so sad.
edit: oh. most if not all of the comments are from reddit.
https://lobste.rs/ has an interesting mechanism to curb bots on the platform.
To join to website, you have to get a referral from another current user. And this referral is public information. So if someone you referred starts acting like an ass, then you can expect some concern being directed your way. People are rightly a bit cautious with giving out referrals as a consequence.
The topics on lobste.rs are more focused on programming and computers (stuff you'd likely also see on HN), and there's not really any political discussion. Traffic is light, expect maybe a dozen new links per day.
This comment, by the way, does not constitute an invitation to ask me for a referral. I don't really know too well anyone on HN, other than the most famous users (none of who know who I am), so if you ask me for a referral, the answer is very likely "no".
I'm curious, how did you figure this out? Do you search texts of random HN comments? Did you remember that comment? I see these posts on here sometimes, and just don't understand how the commenters so consistently find these types of things.
I think it's great- most of the hate probably comes from people who came into their first programming class already knowing how to code to some degree and had to "downgrade" from a traditional language to Scratch to learn along with the class.
I've been there, but there's still some cool stuff you can do when you bring in your outside programming knowledge.
Scratch gets a lot of hate with semi-experienced programmers (the kind to browse this sub) because of its simplicity...
"This sub"? Semi-experienced? Nice way to start a conversation. OK, I'll bite.
My first contact with Scratch was ten years ago when my son wanted to learn it in a workshop organized by Medialab Prado, a group funded by the city council. The wait list was already very long so, in order to cut it, I volunteered as an assistant teacher for another course.
I reviewed my son's assignment and helped him make some modifications after the classes.
I don't hate Scratch. I have a good opinion in general. But it had its shortcomings, that made easy to end up with some sort of visual spaghetti code, as soon as the project grew a little over the size of the examples. IIRC all variables were global.
My son chose a different tool for the next workshop, I don't remember the name (appstudio?), Python for the next and then Python again, but as a teacher. So good for initiation, but my impression was that not so good for bigger programs.
That might have changed, it's been a long time, but if you're curious about where criticism comes from, maybe it's not hate from semi-experienced wannabes :)
Oh and BTW, the guy that was the main teacher in my course defected in a couple of classes, so I had to take over. The children were bored with HTML and I tried introducing JavaScript. Surprisingly they understood it very quickly and liked it. Of course the group had a selection bias, people interested enough in programming to know about the course, etc. but my guess is that with some syntactic sugar and graphic libraries, it could reach a wider audience.
My two cents: every language should make super easy to draw shapes in a canvas and move them. If you need more than ten lines of boilerplate to do that, you shouldn't be designing languages.
My first CS course used Scratch to teach it and I have to say I enjoyed it a lot more than the C++ which followed and I certainly remember more from the experience. C++ was my introduction to pain.
I remember back in school, some of the students in my computer science classes didn't understand the basic concepts of programming: variables, loops, functions, etc. and programming is 90% logic and problem-solving.
You can't teach programming by teaching the syntax of a language, you have to teach logic. If you know one language, figuring out another is going to be easy because most of the things are the same, the only difference is the syntax.