[jyunwai]

Harvard’s introductory-level computer science course, CS50, teaches Scratch for the first week. The course then uses Scratch like pseudocode to outline the high-level structure of programs for students to write in C. This is a proof of concept that Scratch can be part of a good introduction to programming, though the introductory coursework I took at university went straight to learning with Python instead of with Scratch.

For teaching a child, it depends on the person’s interests. You can’t go wrong with Scratch (it looks fun, it’s easy to start with, and it’s immediately accessible within a browser), but the child might eventually want to move on to a more flexible language like Python for more complicated programs.

[actfrench]

How interesting. I didn't know that about the Scratch course at Harvard. Seems like it is a good intro for sure. Thank you!

[jyunwai]

It's a nicely designed course, and you can find a version free for any person to take online and receive a certification (with the submission of auto-graded assignments within a certain timeline): https://cs50.harvard.edu/college/2023/fall/syllabus/

The lectures are well-produced and come with detailed lecture notes, though the assignments are technically difficult to complete. You can find the materials for Week 0 on Scratch is at: https://cs50.harvard.edu/college/2024/spring/weeks/0/

[sk11001]

It's not a Scratch course, they just use Scratch in the first week of a programming course which uses C, Python, JavaScript, SQL.