What is Scratch?

Scratch is a programming language and application developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as an easy-to-use, educational, and fun environment to learn to code and to make video games and applications. It is different from most other programming languages. It is completely visual; rather than typing out lines of code, all you have to do is drag and drop visual blocks to create your program.

Games that might have taken days to be created earlier can be created in minutes, right in front of your eyes. Now, you are going to create some games too!

Understanding the Scratch interface

Before we begin writing our first game, you need to understand the Scratch interface. Scratch is not only a powerful programming language, but also a full-featured application. To write Scratch programs use the following steps:

1. Open the Scratch application. This is included on all copies of the official Raspberry Pi operating system, Raspbian.
2. In the command line, type startx to...