Chirp Blog

So, how do you write software for grown-ups?

The part I like best about MIT Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten Group is lifelong. Hey, life is supposed to go on after graduating from elementary school, and some of us even grew up, sort of. But we still love our sandboxes, crayons and bricks, don’t we? And sometimes I get that nagging feeling that pencils and paper used to be way more powerful, intuitive and inspiring back then than all those expensive gadgets and gimmicks they made me pick up along the way to adulthood.

When they asked Russian playwright Maxim Gorky how to write books for children, he supposedly replied: “The same as for adults, only better”. That non-descriptive quote has been abused all over the internet and in probably every second essay about anything educational. It’s good for a quick smile but leaves you wondering about the consequence: Will I really have to make up with increasingly mediocre prose for the rest of my days?

These questions in part reflect how I feel about Scratch. You may not be able to actually do much with it, but creating a Scratch project is an eye-opening experience every time. Because you’re being productive in a way you probably haven’t been since you forgot about those crayons in your old childhood drawer.

That spectacular productivity makes up for a lot of constraints in Scratch. Some of Scratch’s limitations may be based on educational design, others are probably the result of needing to stay compatible with the online version. But to imagine gradually freeing Scratch from such self-imposed bounds makes my mind reel and my mouth water. And I’m not dreaming about “prototyping”, not having “toys” in mind. I’m after the real thing.

My motivation behind Chirp is primarily a playful one: To experiment with the Scratch Source Code. But sometimes it goes beyond: Let’s not accept mediocre software anymore! Let’s program like kids again!

Gimme back my crayons, now …

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 1:12 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.