I don't really care for these edutech companies that camp on other people's open source technology without even acknowledging it. If you didn't know better you'd think the guy behind this was a genius who invented the whole thing himself, because that's how it's marketed: https://www.patreon.com/edublocks
Blockly is also popular in internet-of-things development with packages like UIFlow, since the block interface is so simple and intuitive that it's kind of self-documenting for peripheral components. It's also easy to extend with your own modules if you're so inclined. It's handy to have as a palette of common functions in a hardware stack without having to track dependencies or maintain a toolchain, making it more accessible for schoolchildren and hobbyists.
Of course the blocks and color coding quickly become unwieldy and hard to read, and the endless clicking becomes tedious. Other irritants are that it defaults to saving only the xml block files, so if you switch over to the code window it's easy to make changes, save them, and not realize that they'll get reverted as soon as you leave the Python window.
I don't really care for these edutech companies that camp on other people's open source technology without even acknowledging it. If you didn't know better you'd think the guy behind this was a genius who invented the whole thing himself, because that's how it's marketed: https://www.patreon.com/edublocks
Blockly is also popular in internet-of-things development with packages like UIFlow, since the block interface is so simple and intuitive that it's kind of self-documenting for peripheral components. It's also easy to extend with your own modules if you're so inclined. It's handy to have as a palette of common functions in a hardware stack without having to track dependencies or maintain a toolchain, making it more accessible for schoolchildren and hobbyists.
Of course the blocks and color coding quickly become unwieldy and hard to read, and the endless clicking becomes tedious. Other irritants are that it defaults to saving only the xml block files, so if you switch over to the code window it's easy to make changes, save them, and not realize that they'll get reverted as soon as you leave the Python window.