SCRATCH AND ITCH
OUR EXPERT
Anybody who works in education or has children of their own will know of Scratch. Created 20 years ago (publicly released in 2007), this simple block-based coding language is aimed at school children but it can be used by anyone, across many devices. When the Raspberry Pi was released in 2012, Scratch 1.x played a huge part in promoting the ease at which learners could create animations and games, and even interact with the GPIO for custom controllers. Adding GPIO support for the Pi saw Scratch become a firm favourite among educators. Scratch 2 brought newer features, camera input and audio input for your own Kinect-like games. Scratch 3 went fully online and so requires a Pi 4 to get the best from it. That said, the extra horsepower is worth it as Scratch 3 enhances the existing features and provides extra tools to create audio and vector sprites.
Les Pounder
is associate editor at Tom’s Hardware and a freelance maker for hire. He blogs about his adventures and projects at
http://bigl.es
.
If you’ve never coded before, block-based languages are the ideal way to get started. Code can be torn apart and rebuilt without copying and pasting huge chunks of text. Multiple functions and threads can be created without issue, and, most importantly, kids can have fun while they learn. Check outhttps://scratch.mit.edu for a plethora of examples and a fantastic getting-started guide.