by David J. Malan <malan@post.harvard.edu>
Printer-Friendly Version of Tutorial

« Previous | Table of Contents | Next »

Conclusion

Though Scratch does support many programmatic constructs, it doesn't support 'em all. Common to many programming languages but missing from Scratch are:

• methods, which allow you pass control of execution from one sequence of blocks to another;
• parameters, which allow you to influence the behavior of methods;
• return values, which allow one sequence of blocks to "return" information to another;
• inheritance and polymorphism, which allow relationships to exist among data structures.

However, to a budding computer scientist, we daresay Scratch is valuable because it omits support for such features as these. What Scratch very much does offer is an intuitive, fun environment in which basic tenets of programming can be explored and deployed without complication by syntax.

May that Scratch ultimately help you, the budding computer scientist, focus less on semicolons and more on the solving of problems.

« Previous | Table of Contents | Next »