# An idea....a snap-like text only interpreter

One of things often said (not by us lot of course) is that block-based programming isn't real and its got to be text based.

So, in seconday schools (UK - equiv High school US) pupils have to learn Python/Java etc and not Snap!

So how about making a Snap-like interpreter that takes Snap-like text
e.g

create variable total

on A key pressed
set total to 1 + 2
print total


Let argue later about whitespace vs ;

Would we be able to cope with all non-graphical blocks in a such an interpreter or is there a killer thing that makes this idea dead in the water?

And then once its made and shown to be better than Python for learning and accepted into the curriculum then we can pull the old switcher-roo and say - just use Snap! directly

If you want a text based language, use python3.

If you don't want sprites and a stage, we already have a text-based Snap!; it's called Scheme. It's kind of been our unofficial reference language, so if we're not sure how to do something we start by seeing how Scheme does it. (Except for arithmetic, about which Jens has incorrect ideas. :~) )