Scratch is not a systems programming language

@jn @eloy

Some guys at MIT in 2003: “Let's make a visual programming language just for kids to learn how computers work. It won't be for anything serious. We'll call it Scratch.”

Kids using Scratch: “Hold my registers.”

@argv_minus_one @jn the eternal classic of underestimating what smart children with a lot of time can achieve :D

@eloy

Indeed. Adults never cease to underestimate the cleverness and persistence of children, especially tweens and teens.

For example, I once heard of a video game for kids. Kids were not allowed to talk to each other, but they were allowed to place furniture in the game world. So what did they do? They encoded messages in the arrangement of the furniture.

They *encoded messages* in the *arrangement of the furniture*.

You will be outwitted. Resistance is futile.

@jn

@argv_minus_one @eloy @jn

how much is kids with time and how much is adults forgetting (or ignoring) their own childhood?

my first “hack” was dialing into an AberMUD and finding out: a) they didn’t disable the in-game command to open a shell, and b) they were running the MUD as root …