I spent much of my life creating Scratch projects. When I was still using Scratch, there were a few key elements that made it great:
It was an outlet for creative ideas. Creativity is a faucet that can't be turned off. I generally have a constant stream of ideas, and when I don't act on those ideas it's frustrating. Scratch gave me a platform for channeling creative energy into the production of something real.
It taught me a lot. You learn the most when you're working in the zone. The zone is that area outside what you already know, but only by a little bit. With Scratch, I was able to consistently hit the mark.
It was quick. Fast projects are great because I have a short attention span. I really enjoy coming up with project ideas, but execution can become a slog. With Scratch, I could have an idea, execute quickly, and share.
It was easy to share. Sharing projects was great because I often got useful feedback and just enough encouragement to keep me going.
I've slowly stopped creating Scratch projects, mostly because I don't think I have much left to learn. After 500+ projects, Scratch is no longer gives me the feeling that I'm in the zone.
Unfortunately, I don't have a replacement activity.
Web development has served as a kind of stand-in, but it has never been quite the same. Websites tend to be much slower to create, and they're harder to share.
Blogging is okay, but the final product doesn't particularly excite me. When I created a Scratch project, I really enjoyed repeatedly playing my own game. Reading my own blog posts doesn't feel the same.
I keep searching for something else to try, but I'm feeling a little stuck.
This post was originally published on my blog.
Top comments (3)
I really feel you here. I'm the same way- I feel I've surpassed what I can learn with Scratch and now I generally just interact with the community. It's really sad that there's nothing that can replace Scratch for more experienced programmers; something that lets you quickly spin up a prototype and get feedback almost instantly. I guess that those are the factors that continually pull people like Griffpatch to stay on Scratch.
There are plenty of places for sharing code. Github, Codepen, Codesandbox, and more all nail many of the technical challenges with code sharing. The issue is that none of them have a real community. (Codepen is the closest, but even then most community events are led from the top-down rather than developing organically between users.)
That's definitely one of the things that most excites me about the Scratch community. Without any interaction from the Scratch Team mature users pull together long-running competition series like Design Duel and OS Wars as well as complicated collaborations like the ScratchRunning podcast and the Scratch Saga. The users actually care about their community, respecting others, and building things together that are amazing. Scratch may not be a perfect community, but it's pretty darn close.