Why blockly is the first preference in coding for kids?

Coding is a powerful tool for creating, expressing, and understanding ideas but this could be a tedious task for kids. When we were kids things like toys, blocks helped us in developing our mind and creating something new from different pieces. Thus similarily Blockly library adds an editor to your app that represents coding concepts such as loops, expression as interlocking blocks without getting confused with complex syntax and makes coding as fun as games like puzzle or lego pieces.

To thrive in tomorrow's world, children must learn to design, create and express using digital technologies
- MIT, USA

• What is Blockly?
• Features of blockly
• Why Blockly?
• Steps to build the Blockly App
• Projects made with Blockly

What is Blockly?

Google Blockly is a neat visual programming tool.

1. It lets you visually create code by snapping different types of blocks together to create code.
2. It is also able to take the code you write and generate code in a variety of languages including Javascript, LUA, Dart, Python, and PHP.

Features of blockly

1. Concepts made easy - Loops are one of the most important as well as complex topics but using blockly we can use them without getting into complexity.
2. Free - Open source features provide accessibility to all.
3. Extensible - Easier for kids to add or delete any block.
4. Extraction- It is easy to export block-based programs to common programming languages and smooth transition to text-based programming.

Why Blockly?

The tool is a fantastic learning tool and makes code both readable and easy to manipulate thus help kids in boosting their confidence. Also, it is a user-friendly UI(user interface) that helps in making it interesting. You don't need to know the languages you are working with or even be familiar with programming languages at all to figure this out. This makes it a fantastic learning tool if you are just trying to learn how to code.

It is easy to understand, easy-to-use visual block interface, and eliminates the frustration of typing for beginners.

Steps for building a blockly App

• Integrate the Blockly editor - This is the first and foremost step, Blockly editor consists of a toolbox to store block types such as variable, function, logic, etc, and a workspace for arranging blocks.
• Create your app's blocks - Once you've got Blockly in your app, you need to create blocks for your users to code with, then add them to your Blockly toolbox.
• Build the rest of the app - By itself, Blockly is just a way to generate code. The heart of your app is in deciding what to do with that code.
• Give Blockly attribution - If you'd like to let people know that you used Blockly to build your app, you can grab a Built on Blockly badge from the Attribution page.

Example- With Google Blockly we can learn about conditions and loops without having to learn how the language handles them specifically.

In this program, we have printed hello world! 3 times using loops, text, and other features of blockly. here we can see this as lego pieces game when pieces are right they fit in each other.

On the right side, we can see the block code is changed into the javascript programming language. Thus, helping kids to know how to write syntactically right code in specific languages which leads to effective learning.

Let's do a small task in the picture above with block code.

1. Count no of blocks used.
2. Match the color of blocks used in the workspace with the block features available.
3. Count which feature is used most.

You will realize it is so easy to identify what has been done in the code just by looking at it.

Blockly can export blocks to many programming languages, including these popular options:- Javascript, Python, PHP, Lua, Dart.

If you want to learn any of the above language blockly is best for you. Do coding using blocks and get the full code just in one click.

Projects made with Blockly

There are many projects built using block coding. One of the most eye-catching kids-friendly projects is Blockly Games.

It is a series of educational games that help in teaching programming. like Puzzle is a quick introduction to Blockly's shapes and how the pieces snap together, Movie is an introduction to mathematical equations. Use math to animate a movie. Then publish your movie for the world to watch.

This is a fun way to learn the most important topics in coding.

Conclusion

Problem - Kids while coding usually has two problems:- the syntax problem and the logic problem which increases coding complexity and results in loss of interest because of less understanding.

Solution - Blockly eliminates the syntax problem, it is impossible to make a syntax error in Blockly. Students can focus entirely on the logic behind conditionals, loops, variables, and other core concepts without worrying about unbalanced parenthesis or missing semicolons.

Thus it makes blockly first preference in coding for kids.

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Happy Coding!