Scratch 3.0 released

Scratch 3.0 was released yesterday. Scratch is an environment aimed to teach basic programming logic to kids with blocks and cartoon-ish characters and scenes. Yesterday, Scratch 3.0 officially became a part of the Scratch online community.

Scratch 3.0 new features

There are various new sprites, backgrounds, and sounds for users to play with.

A new extension library lets users add new sets of blocks that connect to hardware and software components to do more tasks with Scratch

A new sound editor

New programming blocks

Support for tablets, hence the blocks in Scratch 3.0 are bigger

Users can add collections of extra blocks the developers call ‘extensions’

Among existing blocks new ones are added for sound effects, operators to make string operations easier, new pen blocks and a new glide block to move a sprite.

The paint editor has a new layout that increases the visibility of tools and options, an eraser tool, more color options, better control over vector points, more controls for ordering layers, and new gradient controls.

With the sound editor in Scratch 3.0, you can now record sounds, trim audio with more ease, and explore new sound effects.

General reactions to Scratch

Comments from Hacker news are positive for Scratch:

“Scratch is pretty great, and at least 3 of my kids constantly ask if they can play Scratch.”

“Scratch (and similar programming environments) is a very successful way to introduce children to programming and I hope that it continues to do so.”

Any of your old projects can be found at https://scratch.mit.edu/mystuff/. You can check out Scratch at the MIT website.

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