Computer programming is not usually taught to 8-year-olds. But a new system developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology turns building video games into child’s play.
The system is called Scratch, named after a method that hip-hop DJ’s use to mix music. The software, available free online, is being used by schools and some colleges to teach basic computer-science concepts while avoiding scary programming jargon.
Students have used Scratch to create maze-running games, animated stories, and other interactive amusements.
Watch a demonstration of Scratch, and see some of the most popular creations.
10 Responses to Turning Programming Into Child’s Play
Nathaniel M. Campbell - April 11, 2012 at 11:24 am
Bright darts pierce the cold blue, softened only by cotton haze.
(I thought momentarily of deleting “cold”; but then I realized that, as superfluous as it might be to the meaning, the alliteraton of “cold” playing with “cotton” was desirable. Sometimes there are reasons besides redundant meaning for using extra words.)
darccity - April 11, 2012 at 12:23 pm
Isn’t syntax the duty the government imposes on cigarettes and alcohol to deter consumption while generating a politically-acceptable revenue source?
How about then, “The pack of Kools delivered a mentholated nicotine rush that consumed her meager paycheck like the smoke ring residue of oxidized tobacco leaves.”
magyar - April 11, 2012 at 3:09 pm
Isn’t the fat schoolboys line a simile, rather than a metaphor?
nordicexpat - April 11, 2012 at 3:56 pm
Depends upon what you mean by metaphor. It’s not an example of metaphorical language, but you could say that understanding the expression involves comparative inferencing between two distinct conceptual domains in order to achieve textual coherence (so it is metaphorical at the level of thought, if not language).
theatheist - April 12, 2012 at 2:27 pm
The word “metaphor” acts both as genus and species. “Simile” is a species of the genus “metaphor.”
theatheist - April 12, 2012 at 2:34 pm
If by “Bright darts pierce” you mean the stars, this goes way too far. I can imagine stars as the consequence of piercing, but your version invites us to imagine the act of piercing. Further, a dart is a complex weapon: point, shaft, feathers. A star (in the sky) is far too simple a thing for all that baggage.
If I think of cotton in the wild, I might imagine some hazy parts; but there are also dense parts, like balls, really. If you deliberately pull and tease a ball of cotton, you arrive at something like a haze, but that’s a lot of imagining. And of course cotton fabric won’t do at all. There is a reason cotton is normally deployed for clouds entire.
Nathaniel M. Campbell - April 12, 2012 at 2:43 pm
Hmmmm…you may have proved an entirely different point about language, namely, the extraordinary ambiguity that seemingly precise words still have. What I was describing was the sky outside here in Kentucky yesterday: clear with bright sunshine, but cold and with the omnipresent haze that gathers at the horizon. So my “darts” were the bolts of sunlight that pierce down on a cold but clear day, and the cotton was that slight haze at the horizon. I intended the “cold blue” “pierced” by sunbeams to conjure hard edges and smooth surfaces (heightened by the plosive b’s and p and one-syllable words), juxtaposed by the the “cotton haze”, a texture both rougher and softer at the same time — more complex, less clinical (and, to me at least, provoked by the more complex phonetics of the “ft” in “softened” and the aspiration of “haze”, and the use of polysyllables in the second half).
theatheist - April 13, 2012 at 4:24 pm
Your intent probably would have been clear in context. I think I was primed by all the night examples in the article. Cheers.
magyar - April 14, 2012 at 3:35 am
The word “metaphor” acts both as genus and species. “Simile” is a species of the genus “metaphor.” – not according to any authority I can find (OED, M-W, Fowler, Colombia Encyclopedia, and so on.) Can you help with a source?
magyar - April 14, 2012 at 3:52 am
The world is like a stage
And all the men and women are like actors