China Bans Scratch, MIT's Programming Language for Kids (techcrunch.com) 85
China's enthusiasm for teaching children to code is facing a new roadblock as organizations and students lose an essential tool: the Scratch programming language developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. From a report: China-based internet users can no longer access Scratch's website. Greatfire.org, an organization that monitors internet censorship in China, shows that the website was 100% blocked as early as August 20, while a Scratch user flagged the ban on August 14. Nearly 60 million children around the world have used Scratch's visual programming language to make games, animations, stories and the likes. That includes students in China, which is seeing a gold rush to early coding as the country tries to turn its 200 million kids into world-class tech talents. At last count, 5.65% or 3 million of Scratch's registered users are based in China, though its reach is greater than the figure suggests as many Chinese developers have built derivatives based on Scratch, an open-source software.
Possible trolling (Score:4, Informative)
There is some discussion on the Scratch forum that this could be someone maliciously reporting the site to get it block, for the purposes of trolling.
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That has a ring of the probable about it.. Sadly.. I can comprehend trolling on an intellectual basis, but I've never really understood the desire to destroy things without a solid plan for an improved version in mind.
Thanks for the info!
Re:Possible trolling (Score:4, Insightful)
Trolls are sociopaths. Maybe not of the scope of corporare tychoons, warlords and tyrants, but sociopaths nonetheless. There is nothing to understand. And if they happen to have a streak of sadism in them, then there is no empathy in them to stop them from inflicting pain to others for the pure pleasure of it.
They are genetic filth.
Re:Possible trolling (Score:5, Interesting)
In this case, no trolls are needed. The CCP does not like forums that allow uncensored one-to-many communication in Chinese. Scratch does allow that, thus the ban. These bans are often proactive, rather than in response to trolling.
So if you want to have a forum, you need to either allow the Chinese gov to censor it, or do what Slashdot does and have no support for Unicode.
Scratch is a great teaching tool. My kids used it to start learning to code. I helped run an after-school GATE* class at my kids' elementary school. We used Scratch to teach programming to 3rd and 4th graders. Then in 5th and 6th grade, they moved up to Python.
So if China is banning Scratch, then for the sake of their kids I hope they have an equivalent project available.
GATE=Gifted and Talented Enrichment
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So if you want to have a forum, you need to either allow the Chinese gov to censor it, or do what Slashdot does and have no support for Unicode.
Take that naysayers! It's a FEATURE! Slashdot is ahead of the game!
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Take that naysayers! It's a FEATURE!
It is indeed a feature. Unicode is trivial to support. In fact, it is the default. You need to do work to NOT support Unicode.
Slashdot does not support Unicode and that isn't because they haven't gotten around to it. It is because they made a proactive decision that it would cause more problems than it would solve. They made the correct choice.
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That is wrong.
1. It is not trivial to support unicode on an application that was not designed with unicode in mind. Depending on the specifics, it can be easy though (or it could be a lot of work if there are some weird databases involved) - but I would not call it "trivial".
2. Supporting a subset of unicode so that the wrong quotes don't break is not harder than full unicode support. It might actually be easier. So, no downsides.
If it is a "choice" it is about laziness, not about avoiding problems.
Source:
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The article, as well as the summary, point out that many Scratch "derivatives" exist in China. These include Kitten, which is run by a company called Code Mao (!!), which is apparently signaling very strongly about their raison d'etre.
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If the founders are from Hunan, they probably really love Mao, because that is where Mao was born.
When I lived in Shanghai, all the workers in Hunan restaurants wore Mao Zedong lapel pins.
There are people in China who look back on the Mao era as the good ole' days.
It is similar to how many American's believe the 1950s era of Jim Crow, McCarthyism, crowded crappy schools, cramped housing, and hovering nuclear Armageddon, is a lost golden age.
Re: Possible trolling (Score:2)
Golden age (Score:3)
Mao destroyed China. Some 20 million people starved to death during the cultural revolution, and hundreds of millions were suffering desperate hunger. Very few people actually benefited from the cultural revolution.
Yet Mao's photo hangs proudly at Tianamin. Not Deng, who built modern China, but Mao.
Why? Because Mao entrenched the communist party, and lots of cadres benefit from that.
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Very few people actually benefited from the cultural revolution.
Well that's not true lol.
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Perhaps you want to read a history book?
The Chinese see it quite different.
I give you some homework:
Describe China from 1900 - 1930?
Please? Can you do that?
IDIOT
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Dum, de, dum dum dum. Wow.
If you say something that blatantly stupid and want to be taken seriously, you need to explain specifically what the fuck you're talking about so people can understand if you're an idiot or a sociopath.
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Why should he?
You Americans are simply so stupid you do not know the simplest facts about China.
Mao liberated China from 2 dozens of warlords that tried to set up their own fiefdooms.
He kicked out Japan from the Manchuray.
And much more important for idiots like you: he destroyed every european/american occupation zone from which the "european armies" departed to rob temples and museums for artifacts, hijacked kids to become slaves and raped the women who could not get away quick enough.
And finally, he did w
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Two parts:
1) communism is not a shit philossopyh
2) communism did not kill millions of people
People kill people.
Does not matter what "philosophy" the guy with gun has. Or do you think I care if I get killed by an american democrat or an american republican when one of them drops a napalm bomb on my "communist house", idiot?
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I actually don't care if you think I am an idiot or sociopath.
You care a lot more than I do, that's why you're blathering about caring what people think.
People who don't care what people think, didn't even talk about caring what people think. For example, when you're either an idiot or a sociopath, there is only an evaluation there. There is no meta-bullshit about who cares. Nobody cares. In fact, that's why you're here so much, and it is why you have sock puppets and leave reply notifications turned on. Because nobody cares but you, boo hoo.
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Oh, golly, you think you're a smartypants who asked a new question. Right, you think nobody could figure that out before they observed it killing millions, for purposes that are actually maladaptive for a society.
That's you're unable to look it up, or that you pretend not to have, or not to know that you can, proves strongly a lack of honest interest, both in the specific context, and also in philosophy generally.
If you simply look up the etymology of the word "philosophy," you might then not be surprised t
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Mao liberated China from 2 dozens of warlords that tried to set up their own fiefdooms.
That's too moronic for a serious analysis. They were in the middle of a civil war, there were lots of different combatants. Whoever wins that war, killed the most people and won. It doesn't imply they "liberated" anybody. And China wasn't ruled by warlords for any period of time, that is moronic. You're simply describing the fog of war.
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China was ruled by warlords from roughly 1800 - to roughly 1950.
The other regions where occupied by a dozen of european countries, who used the occupation zones to invade the "hinterland" and rob temples and museums.
You are simply absolutely uneducated why they call us "White Devils".
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when men were real men, women were real women, and you could stomp a commie queer to death without undue questions.
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> So if you want to have a forum, you need to either allow the Chinese gov to censor it, or do what Slashdot does and have no support for Unicode.
You wouldn't happen to have a source for that by chance? TIA.
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So if you want to have a forum, you need to either allow the Chinese gov to censor it, or do what Slashdot does and have no support for Unicode.
No, they can't censor it, they'll have to block it. Fuck that "you have to" bullshit. Either way, children in China are not allowed freedom of thought, so who cares China anything? China doesn't like, well cry me a river and save a river dolphin.
This is why they can build plastic but they can't build a jet engine. Education, which is based on curiosity and exploration, is banned. And memorization is minimally instructive.
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China has fighter jets far superiour to the Americans: so they can build a jet engine.
China has robot on the moon and an satellite in an L2 halo orbit behind the moon: so they even can build rocket engines.
Oops, seems you live behind the moon. Up to you to figure what an L2 halo orbit is, IDIOT.
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China has fighter jets far superiour to the Americans: so they can build a jet engine.
Derp derp derp derp derp derp derp.
Do you do a little dance when you read that line?
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Trolls are sociopaths.
I know! This comment [slashdot.org] got shit showed by trolls for two weeks because they think I'm a former Slashdotter turned Twitter/YouTube personality. These fuckers need to get a life.
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We know it's you cdwriter and you are a troll and a very bad liar for sure!
I'm not the one reposting shit from Twitter and YouTube for two weeks to troll someone who obviously left Slashdot. You need help. Lots of it.
STOP TROLLING ME!
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Re:Possible trolling (Score:5, Informative)
There is some discussion on the Scratch forum that this could be someone maliciously reporting the site to get it block, for the purposes of trolling.
FTFA:
Projects on Scratch contains “a great deal of humiliating, fake, and libelous content about China,” including placing Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan in a dropdown list of “countries”, a state-run news outlet reported on August 21. The article added that “any service distributing information in China” must comply with local regulations, and Scratch’s website and user forum had been shut down in the country.
Re: Possible trolling (Score:2)
Let's not forget:
At last count, 5.65% or 3 million of Scratch's registered users are based in China, though its reach is greater than the figure suggests as many Chinese developers have built derivatives based on Scratch, an open-source software.
With hone-grown Scratch-based derivatives, maybe China finds the "mis-information" the parent comment mentions unacceptable?
And let's also remember, banning a web site about Scratch doesn't mean they've banned Scratch. Unless the the local derivatives are also blocked, they merely blocked a website that puts out information the government disagrees with.
I'm not familiar with the site, but I also have to wonder how great the loss is for actual Chinese students - how many young Chinese studen
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Scrath is open source with local forks, so the next step is for China to designate one of them official, load the program up with a bunch of monitoring software and ads about the greatness of XI. They'll host it at Tsinghua (China's flagship university) instead of MIT for the local prestige.
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There is some discussion on the Scratch forum that this could be someone maliciously reporting the site to get it block, for the purposes of trolling.
So they try to style themselves as victims? No surprise, really.
Chinese fragility. (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine being threatened by a programming language used by children, a cartoon about a bear watched by children, and children buying art supplies. [theguardian.com]
Re: Chinese fragility. (Score:3, Informative)
They aren't threatened by the programming language - they have embraced and extended it - what they apparently object to is that the website elevated Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other entities to the status of independent countries. Has China stopped teaching the language, did they shut down all the local forks of Scratch? No, they blocked an English language website that expresses views they don't agree with.
At last count, 5.65% or 3 million of Scratch's registered users are based in China, though its reach is greater than the figure suggests as many Chinese developers have built derivatives based on Scratch, an open-source software.
Re: Chinese fragility. (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine being threatened by someone giving a country its own listing on a drop-down. Chinese are like a ming vase, fragile, hideous, and ultimately worthless.
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It's about 50/50 between the CCP being a bunch of snowflakes and the CCP trying to force as much of the world as possible to acquiesce to their view of Taiwan etc.
The CCP are bunch of disgusting genocidal shitheads. They are looking to erase all non-Han Chinese culture and peoples by methods such as forced sterilisation, mass imprisonment, population dilution and cultural assimilation. They are currently starting to erase the Mongolian language in the part of Mongolia that they occupy. If I was the leader o
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We should make a deal with China. We relinquish our claims on Puerto Rico and they relinquish theirs on Taiwan/Formosa.
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The KMT government in Taiwan has been pretty much overcome. It's a much freer country now.
Re:Chinese fragility. (Score:4)
They didn't ban Scratch (the language), they banned the website.
What they banned is essentially a social network where children can share their creations. And if they intend to use Scratch for education, they probably don't want bad influence from the west, or something like that.
It is not that different from the US banning TikTok. The problem is neither cute characters nor dance videos, it is about control.
As for the language itself, it is open source, they can make their own platform.
Re: Probably cloned (Score:2)
As stated in the summary:
At last count, 5.65% or 3 million of Scratch's registered users are based in China, though its reach is greater than the figure suggests as many Chinese developers have built derivatives based on Scratch, an open-source software.
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China is a basketcase. If and when the country starts to split into territories, watch out! going to be messy.
So is the United States which is why I thank the forces of plate tectonics every day for putting them in different baskets.
In communist China... (Score:2)
state programming language programs YOU.
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you just say, "language programs YOU!" or something. You don't add redundant things like "state" after already saying "communist," it ruins the form.
Essential irrelevant tool... (Score:2)
These days far too many people like to claim their own pet-tools are "essential". That is rarely true and in this case completely untrue. There is no sane reason to believe Scratch is doing any good. Most people will never be good coders and forcing them to use coding tools (no matter how dumbed down) is just wasting their time.
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Scratch is just the new LOGO. It lets you witness maximum results with minimum amount of code written. It's superior to LOGO in that it more closely matches modern computing paradigms. It's inferior in that it's harder to get started; LOGO lets you move the turtle around right now, without understanding much of anything at all.
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I am sure it is a nice toy. But it is hardly more than that and there are many nice toys (and an abundance of not so nice ones) around.
Teach people to think and to do that manually. The pure mechanics of coding are accessible to any educated person. Doing something useful with code that actually works is something else and requires you to be able to think first and then it requires you to learn engineering, not just play around. "Teaching" coding to children is nothing but a waste of time. Using some coding
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"Teaching" coding to children is nothing but a waste of time. Using some coding mechanisms to teach them to think is better,
What do you think you're doing when you teach coding to children? You ARE using some coding mechanisms to teach them to think, whether you (or they) know it or not.
We shouldn't expect children to become programming geniuses overnight, but we should be teaching coding to children, because it helps them learn another mode of thought.
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"Teaching" coding to children is nothing but a waste of time. Using some coding mechanisms to teach them to think is better,
What do you think you're doing when you teach coding to children? You ARE using some coding mechanisms to teach them to think, whether you (or they) know it or not.
We shouldn't expect children to become programming geniuses overnight, but we should be teaching coding to children, because it helps them learn another mode of thought.
Teach them to read and write first. Then teach them to understand what they are reading and writing. Then teach them to understand what somebody else is writing. And then teach them how to do fact checking. Coding is not part of that process. In fact, coding is just on the same level as learning to hold a pencil, but less useful.
So what is really done when coding is taught to children? Rote memorization and some bizarre pattern matching. Nothing useful. Learning to understand how a computer actually works i
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Teach them to read and write first.
What do you think developing those computer skills is doing?
Then teach them to understand what they are reading and writing.
No, we begin learning that before we even learn to read or write, when we learn to understand what we are hearing and saying.
Coding is not part of that process. In fact, coding is just on the same level as learning to hold a pencil, but less useful.
No, the coding equivalent to learning to hold a pencil is learning to use a keyboard. Many if not most of us will produce more output in our lives by typing than by writing, so that's clearly useful.
Coding is on the same level as writing words. You produce output which is understandable. In one case it's to other humans, in a
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You don't even seem to understand the difference between a writing implement and writing, I'm not sure what you think you can usefully say about this subject.
No. I merely disagree that writing code is in any way like writing things for a human being. Writing code is exceptionally limited in its expressiveness. In fact, code boils down to a tiny language and some meaningless placeholders. For example, the "while" language used in computability has just 10 semantic elements plus meaningless variable names. The rest is just syntactic sugar. Yet this "language" is Turing complete. Even smaller models may exist. Language intended for a human beings has a vastly large
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I merely disagree that writing code is in any way like writing things for a human being.
It is fundamentally different in that you have to be extremely precise. It is fundamentally similar in that if you are not precise, confusion results. The fundamental difference is a valid reason to begin education early. Children are capable of learning that there are times when you have freedom to be creative, and times when you have to do things a certain way if you want them to work, and the younger they learn this lesson, the better.
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Ah, well. We can continue this in 10...20 years or so, when somebody hopefully will have done a scientific evaluation of all those "teach xyz to code" efforts.
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It is the same waste of time as in:
1) forcing kids who have no connection to music, to have a music class
2) giving a guy who is sportive and improves his 100m sprint time from 13,00 to 12,50 seconds an A, while you give the fat guy (who actually does not want to do sports) for improving his sprint time from 17,00 to 16,50 an E. Seriously? That makes sense?
3) giving a guy who is not religious a B because he did not skip classes in "religion" - I mean the only "positive" thing about my religion classes where
JFC (Score:1)
That's fucking retarded.
Win some, lose in China (Score:2)
What's the bet? (Score:2)
What's the bet that some communist party member has developed a competitor to scratch and have had the site blocked in order to stifle competition?
A common misconception about china is that they have a free market economy, they're very far from it. The only freedoms allowed of any variety are those authorised by the CCP.
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Seems I've managed to raise the ire of the league of ccp trolls...
I'm not anti-chinese... just anti fascist...