Have you ever had the desire to learn a foreign language? Maybe Spanish, German, or French? Have you considered learning the language of computer programming? It is a 'thing', a true language that you have to learn how to write, speak, read and understand just like the others. I took an attempt to learn some basics in Scratch and it was very eye opening. In using the platform Scratch as my first attempt to create or write in this language, my initial synopsis shows I need a tremendous amount of continued training to become fluent in not only the basics I explored in Scratch, but also the in-depth structural understanding of how to read and write in the many different types of programming languages. Scratch is a welcoming platform for beginners and is loaded with great tutorials on how to get started. It allowed me to work with basic concepts such as dragging and dropping the block commands which can be considered simple and user friendly. Gaining the basic knowledge of how to structure and build multiple commands that flow together and others that start and stop later gave a small inside view if what details are needed to write a high-level functioning program for gaming, animation, etc. While Scratch was and enjoyable and eye opening, it also removed a few key steps discussed in Chapter 10.2 regarding planning and mapping. Removing the planning and mapping, I felt causes more trial by error as a beginner.
My personal experience and
background in computer science is equivalent to a newborn baby understanding their
family native language the day of birth.
Scratch gave me the desire to want to learn more. It has several tutorial videos and has them categorized
based on experience. According to Resnick and Rusk (2020) “In the process of
creating and sharing projects like these, students are not just learning to
code, they are coding to learn” (p. 120-127). This platform is giving the
hands-on experience needed to understand the terminology along with the concept
hand and hand. My current profession is
similar in the way, you learn by completing repetitive task. The more you practice, the more you
understand and that translates to having better efficiency over time.
Included above, is my very first attempt at programming (Scratch, 2025). I title the project, ‘Dance Party’. I am a lively person, that loves dancing and traveling. This short project gives a small insight to how I enjoy spending free time. The first backdrop reminds me of visiting different cities like New Orleans and Washington D.C. The second backdrop reminds me to slow down and enjoy some fun and relaxation with family. My husband and I love to travel to beaches, and on cruises to give ourselves an opportunity to enjoy some time together because we work really hard. Creating the Scratch project in comparison to the participation activities in Sections 10.1 of the textbook were similar for the combined compiling and interpreting runtime code, but immensely different for assembly and query languages. Designing in Scratch was perfectly described in the text as being similar to “Coding with these languages is kind of like building a model from a kit. Most of the hard work, like molding plastic and cutting metal, is done in the factory. When you get the kit home, you just need to put the pieces together and paint the model how you like” (TestOut, 2024). Assembly language is a more advance and efficient language in comparison to Scratch. It is more efficient and easier to understand, yet it is still hard to write and use (TestOut, 2024). Query language is far from comparable to Scratch because it does not create games, animation. Query language such as Structured Query language (SQL) helps you find specific data based on a search (TestOut, 2024).
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