In the 21st century, programming has become a very promising area. And many parents want to teach him their children from an early age so that they become good specialists in the future. However, explaining to a 5-year-old child material about creating applications for mobile platforms or developing sites is inefficient. The child will not understand anything, and besides, interest in programming will be lost. Today, there are several programming languages for children. They are very simple, light, colorful. Learning with them is a pleasure. One such language is Scratch. Scratch is a programming language for children. It is about him that will be discussed in this article.
About language
The Scratch programming language was developed by a small group of programmers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The first experimental version appeared in 2003. The goal was to be studied as the first programming language. And this applies not only to children, but also to people in general. For example, if a person does not even understand at all in computers, much less in programming, but he has a desire to learn, then the Scratch programming language will help him in this.
Thus, in 2006 the official release of this language took place. And we can say that the idea "shot". This language began to be used all over the world. For example, in America, Scratch is used as the first programming language in the elementary courses of college and universities. In general, this language was created as a continuation of the Logo language. Therefore, the appearance consists of blocks. Scratch is an object-oriented programming language. The main components are objects, they are also called sprites. The sprite itself can be animated, that is, consist of several frames. Programming occurs by dragging and dropping blocks into the scripts section. Each block contains text, such as "Always execute." The blocks themselves are divided into 8 types and differ in colors.
Basically, the Scratch programming language is used to create cartoons and simple games. By the way, even teachers use this language to create colorful presentations for lessons with which you can interact. By the way, Scratch is also used in robotics. In 2008, it became possible to program the Arduino microcontroller using this language. That is, even children can collect their robots. The scope of Scratch is wide enough. We can say that the programmers at the Massachusetts Institute really managed to create the perfect language for beginners.
Where to download and how to install
You can create in the Scratch programming language both by downloading the program and online. Moreover, there are even mobile applications for Android and IOS for learning the language. For ease of use, it is better to download the program for your operating system on the official website. It weighs a little, only 58 MB. Also on the official website of the Scratch programming language, you can download examples, lessons and familiarize yourself with the documentation. The installation file is as follows:
Click "Continue", after which we accept the license agreement and the installation of the development environment begins. After successful installation, the program itself will open. We can see the following.
As you can see, the program is in English. You should not be upset, because Scratch is available in many languages, including Russian. To change the language in the program, you need to click on the circle in the form of a globe in the right left corner, scroll down and select "Russian", after which you can work with the Russian language.
First program
Let's create our first program in the Scratch programming language. By the way, both on the official website and in the program itself, you can see many examples and lessons in this language. There are also many ready-made sprites for creation. We will create a simple program using a standard sprite, a cat. We’ll create a program so that when you click this cat itself, it moves 10 steps forward. To do this, first go to the "Scripts" section.
There we go to the "Events" tab and drag the block "when the sprite is pressed" into the field.
Next, go to the “Motion” tab and drag the “go 10 steps” block from there, and then connect them together with the first block. It turns out like this.
That's it, the first program in the Scratch programming language is ready. Now when you press the cat, he will move 10 steps. As you can see, working with this language is really very easy.
Summary
Summing up, we can say that Scratch is really one of the best languages for beginners in programming and is great for teaching children. The Scratch programming language in Russian is very popular, because even the very youngest children will be able to join the programming world and take their first steps.