Scratch is a block-based visual programming language developed by the MIT Media Lab.
Scratch created a community where children can program online and share the results of programming. Now Scratch has been translated into more than 70 languages. Scratch has been learned and recreated by various programming institutions, such as extracurricular training classes, K12 education, universities, research institutions, etc.
The name of Scratch
This name originated from a DJ’s technique of playing vinyl records. The DJ put the record on the magnetic head, played the disc through the grinding disc, and combined the music at will to produce different sound effects. The goal of Scratch is also to allow users to create different programs by combining resources (music, pictures, videos, etc.).
What is visual programming?
Speaking of programming, what everyone can think of is the appearance of a programmer sitting in front of the computer and typing on the keyboard. Scratch’s visual programming is not like this. It presents a lot of programming blocks in the form of building blocks. You only need to drag and drop the programming blocks in the interface to combine, and then the programming is completed.
Scratch Operation Interface
Let’s see what programming looks like.
Let’s divide it into different areas.
Here, we can see the programming building blocks, which look like pieces of a puzzle. The blocks are divided into different areas according to their functions, including “Motion Block “, “Event Block” ,”Looks Block” and so on. For example, if we want to change the color of one sprite, we can find the blocks we need in the “Looks Block” quickly.
This blank area in the middle is the programming area, which is to drag the building blocks to this area to perform combined programming.
We can see an example here. These colorful blocks formed a script.
The left area is the stage area, where you can see the videos or the games that you design.
For children, Scratch is a very interesting and useful programming language.
Scratch History
- The project was established in 2004
- 2005 Scratch 1.0 internal beta version
- 2006 Scratch 1.0 public beta version
- In March 2007, the first Scratch program was run
- In May 2007, Scratcstrong.0 was released
- In August 2007, Scratcstrong.1\Scratcstrong.2 was released
- 2008 Scratch 1.3 released
- In April 2009, the 1,000,000th project in the Scratch community was released
- 2012 Scratch 2.0 beta version
- 2013 Scratch 2.0 released
- Celebrating 10 years in 2017
- Scratch 3.0 was released in 2018
In this article, we briefly introduce the origin and history of Scratch.
Next, we will explore the secrets of Scratch step by step.
