HACKER Q&A
📣 macjc

Transition from Scratch programming to mainstream programming


My 12-year-old's project [1] is featured on the Scratch website, which is a great surprise to me. I saw her hanging on Scratch but didn't realize she could go this far without any help from her parents. I actually tried to teach her coding a couple of years ago but she showed little interest. In retrospect, I guess what I taught was too boring. She is clearly more into making animations and minigames. I wonder how I can keep her interest up and help her to transition from Scratch to mainstream programming.

I am a decent programmer in multiple languages (not in Scratch) but I know little about coding education or game development. I googled around and found various articles on teaching kids programming, including [2] and [3] from Hacker News. However, each case is different. I'd love to hear about your experiences. Thank you in advance.

[1] https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/456279794/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20210641

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24527203


  👤 gus_massa Accepted Answer ✓
Nice game. Does the gravity change when you change planet? Mars is evil. If she adds Jupiter and it is big, she should implement checkpoints.

If she want to continue with interactive projects, I guess it's better to learn JavaScript/TypeScript.