Getting this out of Google's paws is an unalloyed good. Blockly is a wonderful way for kids to ease into script-based programming. I've used it many times in lessons for kids as young as 8.
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@mttaggart is scratch a Google product?
@winterknight1337 It is not! Scratch comes from MIT. Incidentally, there was some FUD about Epstein money being involved at one point, but that isn't so. https://mres.medium.com/a-statement-about-research-funding-af274404ee3d
@mttaggart reading comprehension isn’t my strong suite today I guess. I just realized you said getting that project out from Google. Nevermind, things make more sense now.
@mttaggart I was pleasantly surprised to see screen-reader support be a prominently mentioned roadmap item in this announcement, and I look forward to seeing where this goes. Up until this point, accessible alternatives to block-based coding have existed in the form of cost-prohibitive hardware devices (CodeJumper, ET AL). So having a generally-available nonvisual approach to this teaching method will be a major win for sure.
#accessibility #inclusivity #inclusiveDesign
@mttaggart yes, it's definitely good that it's open-source now
we were just bemoaning how NONE of the programming-for-children things today are remotely as good for actually learning to program in a serious way as what was available in the 1980s. it's all very watered-down, settling for things that fall far, far short of learning transferrable skills or making anything you'd actually want to share with anyone.
@mttaggart some of that is unavoidable: society's standards for how much a program has to do to count as a "real" program are higher than they used to be. also it no longer makes sense for beginning programmers to interact directly with hardware, which means beginner education these days lacks a foundation in what the machine actually does, and that's not really changeable.
@mttaggart but a lot of it is just that the vendors providing this stuff are combining other people's pieces together in a very last-minute afterthought-y way, shoveling it out the door with minimal documentation, and never following up
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