
What's New in Scratch 2.0 - rpsubhub
http://scratch.mit.edu/overview/
======
emehrkay
My son is finally make his space shooter the way he envisioned because of the
new clone sprite action. Exciting times ahead, here is a pic of him getting
down last night:

<https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BJ3OudQCQAALZCc.jpg:large>

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dpritchett
I had to implement some unsatisfying hacks to make my Scratch shooter work as
well! If I remember correctly I was manually duplicating the master projectile
and I had to register each projectile against each enemy.

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pflats
Using Alice 2.2 (which also doesn't allow cloning/instantiation) my students
had a similar issue, and solved it by using what they called "Megaman logic".

Megaman could apparently only shoot N bullets at once (3 or 5, I forget).
Thus, they only ever had 5 bullet objects, iterated through a list to see if
the bullet was shot or not, and only let you fire if there was a spare bullet.

I thought it was very clever. Sounds like you did much of the same thing.

~~~
dpritchett
Just so! I had three projectiles (rock1, rock2, rock3) and they shared a
global "fire selector" that operated as a sort of mutex.

[https://www.evernote.com/shard/s4/sh/90b814fd-
df52-4fcf-9127...](https://www.evernote.com/shard/s4/sh/90b814fd-
df52-4fcf-9127-8d0e5ed4d448/29f131d569ece22e606957b4f7c946ea)

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objclxt
One important thing that's new in Scratch 2.0 under the hood is the transition
from the .SB file format (a rather complex SmallTalk object store) to a ZIP
based bundle containing all required media along with JSON encoded scripts.
The upshot of this is that consuming Scratch files in other apps should be a
lot easier.

That said, one _downside_ of Scratch 2.0 (at least in my view) is the
migration to a Flash based editor/playback engine. And I don't entirely blame
MIT for this, because Scratch 2.0 has been under development for quite a long
time. Five years ago, Flash maybe seemed more appropriate than it is now.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Flash sucks, but I'll take it over the old Java applet any day.

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vanderZwan
I dunno, the latter is much more stable in my experience.

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shawndumas
I used Scratch to teach my son how to program at 9; and now, at 11, he's doing
JS/HTML/CSS at a beginner level.

We used the scratch programming for teens [1] book.

\-----

[1]: <http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1598635360/>

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mountaineer
2.0 may have been a long time in the making, but I just bought the Scratch
Adventure book for my kids last week, which uses 1.4, unaware of the pending
update. When I went to the site to download Scratch, it was down while
preparing for the 2.0 release. I thought it was a pretty ironic introduction
to programming, always new shiny objects.

~~~
tylero
Indeed! Don't let that stop them from having fun, though.

For the book, you can still download 1.4:

<http://info.scratch.mit.edu/scratch_1.4_download>

And all the games should still work in the new 2.0 interface too; it's an
overhaul of the development environment, with backwards compatibility. (I'm
updating the book now for 2.0, I edited it.)

~~~
jaredgeorge
I'm really glad to hear that! My 9 yr old daughter and I just finished going
through this book on 1.4 and had a lot of fun. Do you happen to know if any of
the projects will be different? I'd certainly buy a new copy again for
additional projects.

~~~
tylero
We'll have some entirely new Scratch books with "harder" projects in the Fall,
I hope. Physics simulations, geometry, math and science-oriented projects, not
just games.

Some great new authors working on those, and not just Scratch too, but some
"real languages".

But sadly, the 2nd edition of Super Scratch will probably just be an update to
stay relevant, not an overhaul.

I hope that Edmond, the author of that first edition, will write a second
book, but that depends on his time. You can check out some of his other
Scratch projects here: <http://scratch.mit.edu/users/LEAD/>

~~~
jaredgeorge
That's great news! I appreciate it and I'll keep an eye out for those books.

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pflats
I'd love it if anyone could give a good head to head on Scratch 2.0 vs. Snap!
4.0[1] (the new name for BYOB, Berkley's Scratch spin-off). I realize that
Snap is aimed more teaching high school/college CS, but they're seeming to
converge a bit.

I don't have a CS class this year, so I haven't set aside enough time to dig
into the latest versions of Snap or Scratch. If anyone has any insight to
share, it'd be greatly appreciated.

[1] <http://snap.berkeley.edu>

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objclxt
From a purely technical perspective, the biggest difference is that the
Berkeley team (Snap) re-implemented in JavaScript, and MIT (Scratch 2.0) in
Flash. The former also uses XML as a format, the latter JSON (in 2.0).

Like you say, Snap's main difference is it makes some more advanced CS
concepts more overt, primarily for use as a teaching tool for older students.
To this end, it doesn't have the deep social integration that Scratch does:
remixing and sharing are a big part of Scratch.

But that isn't to say that Scratch isn't suitable for high school or college
level courses - Harvard's been using Scratch in the first week of it's intro
CS class for several years now, with great success. The advantage of Snap is
that transitioning from it to pure coding can be less of a leap, due to
support for things like recursion, procedures, and continuations.

The Lifelong Kindergarten's remit at MIT means that they tend to place
emphasis on a certain age range. In addition to Snap there's also an offshoot
of Scratch targeted at very young children (Scratch Jr, which I think is
developed by Tufts).

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pjmlp
So Smalltalk is gone?! :(

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edent
Requires an "always on" Internet connection.

Coupled with the Flash front end, that doesn't make me hugely happy.

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lifeisstillgood
Anyone know more about how the social features are moderated? Thats my first
thought these days, sad I know but...

~~~
kawsper
I don't know how they do it. I have seen some pretty freaky games on their
webpage, and I have seen a lot of games uploaded from game-programming events
that I have hosted.

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codeoclock
What does this mean for the Raspberry Pi? Will Raspbian's default browser be
able to handle it?

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alok-g
Does anyone have any recommendations on at what minimum age should this be
introduced to kids? The website recommends 8-16 years, but then I was doing
real programming at the age of ten, so eight may not be the best answer. My
son is five right now.

Introducing too early seems to have a downside that if my son does not like it
(or cannot grasp it), he develops a negative feeling towards it like boredom
or else, and then subconsciously does not want to return to it even at the
right age.

~~~
juliendorra
During Coding Goûter sessions, kids as young as 5 have played and created
things with Scratch 1.4 and loved the experience. They are begging to come
back, and it becomes a very usual thing to do, which is exactly our goal.

(Note that we mix kids, with ages ranging from 5 to 14, and always a 50/50
ratio of girls/boys, not via quota but because of the way the events are
planned. So we also have older kids. It's good for the younger ones.)

At this age, they (usually) don't read, so they generally are working with an
adult and another kid, or in some instance with an older kid (my just 6 years
old daughter for example worked one of the firs times with an older girl that
knew Scratch.)

A very important thing to do is to let the creative direction to the kids.
Don't force the programming of a shooter on them. They have lot of ideas, and
they will be more motivated if the idea come from them. Also they will be
proud to see it happen. They'll want to move things, animate, etc. They'll
want to copy things they have seen. Letting them draw on paper, for example a
character, then taking a picture and incorporating it in Scratch is a nice way
to alternate between two different activities (solving the "will they focus
for long?" question)

If you want to know more: <http://codinggouter.org> and my talk at FOSDEM:
<https://fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/coding_gouter/> may be helpful

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TazeTSchnitzel
This is huge! Vector graphics and cloning are things I've wanted for years.
It's also great to see it alk in the browser.

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FramesPerSushi
Did anyone really want an in-browser editor? It's the kind of thing that's
cool in theory, but not productive.

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gbin
but but how it will work with the lego wedo now ? :(

