Visual programming language

Community of users[edit]

The Scratch website after the release of public project sharing in late 2007

Scratch is used in many different settings: schools, museums, libraries, community centers, and homes.^[17][18][8] Although Scratch's target group is 8–16-year-old school pupils,^[19] it is used by all ages including educators and parents. This wide outreach has created many surrounding communities, both physical and digital.^[7] In April 2020, the Tiobe ranking of the world's programming languages included Scratch into the top 20. According to Tiobe, there are 50 million projects written in Scratch, and every month one million new projects are added.^[20]

Educational users[edit]

Scratch is popular in the United Kingdom and United States through Code Clubs. Scratch is used as the introductory language because the creation of interesting programs is relatively easy, and skills learned can be applied to other programming languages such as Python and Java.

Comparison of Scratch 1.4 and Scratch 2

Scratch is not exclusively for creating games. With the provided visuals, programmers can create animations, text, stories, music, and more. There are already many programs which students can use to learn topics in math, history, and even photography. Scratch allows teachers to create conceptual and visual lessons and science lab assignments with animations that help visualize difficult concepts. Within the social sciences, instructors can create quizzes, games, and tutorials with interactive elements. Using Scratch allows young people to understand the logic of programming and how to creatively build and collaborate.^[21]

Scratch is taught to more than 800 schools and 70 colleges of DAV organization in India and across the world.^[22][23]

In higher education, Scratch is used in the first week of Harvard University's CS50 introductory computer science course.^[24][25]

Online community[edit]

"Jumper", an example of a game created with Scratch 2.0

"Abyss", an example of a game created with Scratch 3.0

On Scratch, members have the capability to share their projects and get feedback. Projects can be uploaded directly from the development environment to the Scratch website and any member of the community can download the full source code to study or to remix into new projects.^[26][27] Members can also create project studios, comment, tag, favorite, and "love" others' projects, follow other members to see their projects and activity, and share ideas. Projects range from games to animations to practical tools. Additionally, to encourage creation and sharing amongst users, the website frequently establishes "Scratch Design Studio" challenges.^[28]

The MIT Scratch Team works to ensure that this community maintains a friendly and respectful environment for all people.^[29][30]

Educators have their own online community called ScratchEd, developed and supported by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In this community, Scratch educators share stories, exchange resources, and ask questions.^[31]

Scratch Wiki[edit]

The Scratch Wiki is a support resource for Scratch and its website, history, and phenomena surrounding it. Although supported by the Scratch Team (developers of Scratch), it is primarily written by Scratchers (users of Scratch) for information regarding the program and website.^[32]

Developers[edit]

Both Scratch 2.0 and 3.0 are open source on GitHub,^[33] and developers may contribute to Scratch.^[34]