Is there anyone who has never in their life looked at a machine and been like “wow!”?
Sure, some people love machines more, and others less – but everyone secretly likes a bit of steampunk, right?
And that’s probably enough already with the everyoneing…
Dogs may bark at large insects and toy robots (and lawnmowers) – but in us, we have that space for fascination…
“Check out Mx M and their Marvellous Machines” – as they might have said (in slightly more dated language) in the 19th century.
Well, most truly marvellous machines (as well as modern electronics) are sadly beyond me, but I still remember feeling pleased on day 1 programming when I’d made my computer print out:
“3
2
1
Liftoff!”
…as part of a program where, with a few clicks, it would print a countdown from 10 instead of from 3… or a countdown from 100, or from like a trillion million billion, if you really wanted to sit there and wait*
*You can of course always exit (or “kill”) the program, which is an important move from pretty much the beginning, particularly if you want to count up or down from something enormous…
A program is something like a machine – or a factory, and is as automated as you can be bothered. It can be fun to play around with stuff like pop up messages to potential users of the program (eg yourself) – so, in that countdown program, I could have added a pop up from the program that the countdown had finished and did you want to shut the program down to go and do something else, or to watch another countdown like a boss…
“3
2
1
Liftoff!
[Countdown completed, hit enter to quit the program or type ‘r’ to repeat. If you now want to check the weather where you live then close the program down and go and do that….]”
Here’s a video introducing Scratch that you might like: