Hi! I am working for a school district. Teaching code to kids is getting a lot of popularity. Assembling blocks when coding let kids do tries and errors while working on the logic without making syntax or spelling errors. This also help teachers to debug code faster with kids. Using code blocks facilitate upgrading to text based coding in the futur too. Generating GD script with blocks seems a good idea to democratize coding and Godot to me! I am not a Godot developper thought. What do you guys think about this??
Scratch like code editor to replace visual scripting editor?
I'm too lazy to find the link now (it's not very convenient on this forum), but that's exactly what I said: Godot is very handy for learning programming and Visual Scripting is a good aid in that. Throwing it out was too reckless.
- Edited
Tomcat Thanks for your replay! I did not much use deprecated Godot visual scripting tool, but I think that tree like node based or Unreal Blue print like visual scripting is less interesting as an introduction to programming. The tree flows of nodes are not very similar to text based coding. Scratch like blocks are just a visual representation of actual text based code. The blocks help limit spelling errors and could be easily converted to GD script. It also makes it easier for the learner to transition to text based programming.
I tried following the tutorial on the deprecated visual coding editor. I think it was not simple enough like code blocks could be.
I also think you are absolutly right that Godot needs to make it very handy to learn programming! Do you think code blocks could be better than the deprecated visual scripting editor?
jbeausej Do you think code blocks could be better than the deprecated visual scripting editor?
I do not have a clear definite opinion on this issue. I think that for such an opinion, you need to have experience of practical teaching, and I have no such experience yet. I was not able to establish a relationship with a nearby school and open a course there. But I intend to try again next school year. And so I only have very rough thoughts.
Visual programming, is good for the very beginning — to get acquainted with the subject — when the tutor writes programs in advance, and the student by changing parameters observes the result. But later on it is very important to teach students to write code properly, not to use templates. I know a case where the teacher deliberately gave a picture of the code, so that students would get used to typing it in, not copying it. I think this case is wrong, but the direction is right. Ideally, bring code formatting to automatism. But this depends on many factors: available time, target level of training, material provision etc… Maybe when I start teaching I will change my opinion.
Tomcat Yes so if the goal is to eventually code with text, using a node based visual editor is not a good direction to me. I think having code blocks would make Godot a nice choice for highschool multimedia courses for teens. The main idea is to develop problem solving strategies before getting into the syntax.
jbeausej I think having code blocks would make Godot a nice choice for highschool multimedia courses for teens.
Godot, a game engine after all. I doubt that the core development team will be concerned about this issue. Especially since the task is quite specific — they may not even know specifically what these blocks should do and how to look. Teaching is a special thing. But Godot is an open source engine, so if you can find companions, you can add to it as an asset or extension. Yep, it would probably be interesting and in demand.
- Edited
Great point! An asset would be awesome! Godot could differenciate from other commercial free for starters engines if it had code blocks. These blocks could only cover basic functions and tools to get people started before moving on to GD script.
19 days later
I like Godot a lot, I've previously been using Unity and have actually done 4 of the official tutorial projects on the website, but it's very memory extensive on my Ubuntu box, which has hardly any hard drive space and consequently won't load at the moment, however Godot loads with no problems and I've bought a couple of books on it to learn how to make stuff.
a year later
New block coding plugin available here, perhaps you will find it useful:
https://godotforums.org/d/40601-block-coding-high-level-block-based-visual-programming
The problem with visual scripting/writing code is that most of the Internet's illiterate/can't spell, so they do bad typos on the code and cry real tears when it doesn't work as a result.