I am talking on Friday, December 27th, 2024. This Scratch Update #2.

I am a very young Scratcher, specifically, 10 1/2 years old. I have been programming for years now, (as
you can see on my account, 4 years and 4 months I've been on Scratch), so I have gotten some
experience since I started. There are 3 reasons why I still use Scratch after so much time. Number one is
that the graphics are easy. Quite easy, actually, once you're used to it. Number two, is that it takes some
practice to get used to a programming language. I have been on Scratch since I was 6 years old, and that
is a lot of dedication for me. It's almost half my lifetime! Scratch is what I have currently gotten used to,
and it's not that hard to learn, and learning something from a very young age can really help using it.
Number three, and most importantly, is that it is very easy to share projects. It is so easy, in fact, that it is
where I get most of my popularity from! I have shared hundreds of projects on Scratch, and have built up
a big profile on it. This has me quite a bit to lose if I switch away from Scratch and stop updating my
profile.

There are a few counterarguments to using Scratch. Number one is that it is quite limited in terms of data
structures, actually. No dictionaries. No multi-dimensional arrays. No lists inside of lists. No classes. I can
go on and on about this. I need to use my own code and loopholes to solve this. Number two is that it is
ONLY graphical, and requires a whole character set to produce such a text. I have done this before, but it
is quite annoying. Number three is that, it can't access anything. No fetches and posts. No JavaScript.
Not even custom extensions. This is actually somewhat limiting. This means it can't access outside-world
stuff. (Technically it can, but it's slow and hard, and I won't go into detail here.)

I would say, though, that my profile on Scratch is a big weight to continuing to use Scratch. I am still, to
this day, using a programming language for 8 year olds.

- Hunter Chen, 12/27/2024