speed-comparison VS scratch-www

For example, Java runs on the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) instead of running directly on the hardware, and it also has a garbage collector to handle memory management. Running on a virtual machine means your code is more abstracted: you only have to worry about the JVM and not about the platform you’re running on (since the JVM is the platform), and it’s more portable since your code can go on anything that runs the JVM. But running the JVM as an intermediate layer takes more computing power and so does running garbage collection, meaning that you experience a performance penalty. Here’s one benchmark I could find comparing the use of different programming languages to compute pi, in which Java took about 3x as long as C to complete the same task

Or you've got the speed comparisons (https://github.com/niklas-heer/speed-comparison) -- Python is probably something like 10% the speed of C/C++ (although, like I said, 99% of the time that's comparable to premature optimization).

Looks like a PR was merged yesterday to make the code more simd friendly https://github.com/niklas-heer/speed-comparison/pull/52

Sure, they could have chosen Python. But I doubt the language differences account for even a noticeable percentage of the slowness of Brew.

and https://codecombat.com, which has been around for a while now.

I think this paradigm (navigating a character using "move" function invocations) is good but kind of exhausts its usefulness after a while. I question whether my daughter learns coding this way or just is playing a turn based top down platformer. The most code like thing is when you use 'loops' to have characters repeat sequences of moves. I think when kids grok these things these apps become just types of glofiried education flavoured video games. There are a lot of things in kodable for instance that I feel are just basic web games with coding terms slapped on it.

https://scratch.mit.edu/ is more like 'programming' imo, even at the level of the objective -- having a blank canvas to create something. It seems a little advanced for my kids right now though.

+1 Scratch! My son started with it, then expanded into Roblox/Lua.

Children can download other people's games and experiment there. Scratch also has pre-made art, sounds, music.

https://scratch.mit.edu/

Scratch.mit.edu is a highly-recommended place to start [1] https://scratch.mit.edu/

> 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 is designed, developed, and moderated by the Scratch Foundation, a nonprofit organization. [2]

1: https://scratch.mit.edu/

https://scratch.mit.edu/ (Scratch version 2)

Someone who uses scratch.mit.edu (like me)

Now that I think of it, I did start game development on scratch before going right into java (because of minecraft).

I'm looking for the best systems to help a 4/5 year old get the basics of programming. My daughter has shown interest in what I do, and loves puzzles and building things. Looking for something visual and fun that can start her down the path of logic and creating with computers.

I have a passing familiarity with Scratch [1], which I'm now looking into more, but am hoping others can share their knowledge and experience in this area.

[1] https://scratch.mit.edu/