Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Scratch programming for kids

It's summer holidays and I had been helping my kid (8 years) get started with programming. So I bought the Computer Coding for Kids book by Carol Vorderman. The books covers initially Scratch (from MIT) and then Python from the basics. Scratch is a visual programming language which is easy for those who are just getting started with programming. No need for typing code, more of drag and drop.

So, here is his first program (link here), a small and cute game in Scratch. Click on the flag on the top right, to get the game started. He was all excited to get it published in this blog. One thing to notice is that the execution of the game requires Adobe Flash, which is slowly getting out of fashion with the different browsers because of the vulnerabilities and stability issues. For some reason, I was able to get it run only in IE and not in Edge/Chrome/Firefox browsers.


Scratch looks a bit basic, but I have seen some interesting programs developed in it. I would recommend the above mentioned book for anyone who wants to get started with programming. Carol has written a few more books, which I plan to buy once we complete this book.

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