Programming Languages

     "Scratch is the world's largest coding community for children and a coding language with a simple visual interface that allows young people to create digital stories, games, and animations." (Scratch! For About, n.d.) In week one of TEC 101, students were instructed to build a short program with at least 30 blocks. Afterward, you are required to complete a reflection paper. Through the analysis of this post, we will discuss my experience building a program using Scratch, discuss the difficulties that I encountered along the way, insights that I gained, and compare my experience programming in Scratch with the participation activities in Sections 2.8, 2.9, 2.10, and 2.11 of the course text, lastly, discuss my experience with the program and how to stack up with Scratch. 

    When I started my scratch project, It took a while as I did not know any of the existing functions or control blocks. Additionally, I had difficulty deciding what type of program I would make. Is it going to be an interactive story or something that was all automated? After reading the prompt, I realized I needed to make a simple program and not overthink it. I decided to make a small, automated program of a character having a dance party. Designing the program was simple and easy. However, I did encounter some issues along the way. One problem was I did not know how to make the character make different dance moves, as there were no simple instructions on how to do so. However, after 20 minutes of messing around and exploring the software, I found a block that made the character strike different poses. After I solved these issues, my program started taking off, and I made significant progress; I even designed it to have music and words for the characters. However, I soon encountered another issue. After the music started to play, the script did not run the following code until after it played. After again messing around with the software, I found that there was a block that could make the music keep playing. I replaced my music block with that, which worked flawlessly. While their issues were minor, they took time to overcome, and through being reliant and trying different fixes, I overcame them. 

    Some insights I realized after interacting and using this coding software is that coding does not have to be so dull; it can be simple and colorful and use an interactive platform such as Scratch. After reading and interacting with sections 2.8, 2.9. and 2.10; text scratch is nothing like the program languages discussed. This is mainly because Scratch uses its website to build and code and uses dragging blocks instead of typing. After reading the course text, I learned that there are four different types of programming languages with the addition of Scratch. There is machine language that is designed for computers. "Machine language is a low-level programming language that is understood by computers. Machine language is made up of binary bits 0 and 1. Machine language is also known as machine codes or object code." (GeeksforGeeks, 2023) Next is assembly language; this language is similar to machine language as it is based on machine language; however, it uses an assembler to convert human input to machine language. "Assembly language is a textual human-understandable representation of a machine language's 0's and 1's, as in: Add M[5] M[6] M[7]. An assembler automatically converts an assembly language program into machine language." (Section 2.9 - TEC 101: Fundamentals of Information Technology & Literacy | ZyBooks, n.d.) Additionally, there are high-level languages such as Python and Javascript. "A high-level language is a programming language having higher-level instructions than assembly language, enabling greater programmer productivity." (Section 2.10 - TEC 101: Fundamentals of Information Technology & Literacy | ZyBooks, n.d.) This type of language is different as it usually requires a compiler.  

    

After using Scratch, I found that it is the simplest to use compared to higher-level languages such as Python. I could quickly create a functional script after just playing around with the software. Additionally, I found it easier as it did not require weeks of learning to figure out how to build a complex script, as it was just dragging and dropping blocks. When looking at different scenarios where these different types of languages would be most effective, machine or assembly language would be ideal for coding a script for a computer operating system. A high-level language is perfect for creating a creative script for a website or a design program. Lastly, Scratch is ideal for students or children to start learning about the world of the program and for creating a short, interactive story. After considering the different programming languages, the higher-level language Python would be the most popular ever because of its vast versatility. "Python is commonly used for developing websites and software, task automation, data analysis, and data visualization. Since it's relatively easy to learn, Python has been adopted by many non-programmers, such as accountants and scientists, for a variety of everyday tasks, like organizing finances." (Staff, 2025) 

    Through the analysis of this reflection paper, we discussed my experience building a program using Scratch,  difficulties that I encountered along the way, and insights that I gained,  as well compared my experience programming in Scratch with the participation activities in the course text, lastly discussed my experience with the program and how to it compared to Scratch. Using the scratch software was a fun experience, and I learned a lot of important information about Scratch and the different types of programming languages.  

Works Cited:

Scratch! for About. (n.d.). [Video]. https://scratch.mit.edu/about

Section 2.10 - TEC 101: Fundamentals of Information Technology & Literacy | ZyBooks. (n.d.). https://learn.zybooks.com/zybook/TEC101:_Fundamentals_of_Information_Technology_&_Literacy_(TED2507A)/chapter/2/section/10

GeeksforGeeks. (2023, December 18). What is Machine Language? GeeksforGeeks. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/what-is-machine-language/

Staff, C. (2025, January 21). What is Python used for? A beginner’s guide. Coursera. https://www.coursera.org/articles/what-is-python-used-for-a-beginners-guide-to-using-python

Scratch Project Share URL Link: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1134677946