Criticism is needed for the idea of a large project

[mark4sisb]

@sarpnt

i did read the manual. i still think the block should just use rings. you don't need to know about procedures as data, it's block shaped and the blocks fit in the exact same. you don't need to know about rings, they're already there and you can't even remove them by accident. needing a trick to put a constant value in a ring slot could easily be solved by allowing writing in it exactly the same as any other slot.

But how would you input text? That is the main thing that I wanted you to notice. You have just been complaining about dragging a Boolean block around, and yet you want people to have to drag in an id block to use text in the "if <> then else " reporter? Secondly, what if you want the if-else reporter to report the value of a variable? When you drag it in, the ring disappears. Suddenly the if-else reporter is calling the value of the variable, not the variable itself. This will either throw a confusing error, or even worse, if the value of the variable is a script itself, won't throw an error at all while still malfunctioning.

@sarpnt

i didn't say to turn it into a checkbox, checkboxes are square toggles separate from other options, i said to turn it into a round radio button like the other block parts, which you can only pick one of.
the current setup is an improperly labelled radio selector between "title text" and "the rest of the options hidden behind this arrow"

Sorry, I didn't realize the distinction between checkboxes and radio buttons. However, I think that it is good that all the types of inputs are grouped in one area, while the label option is separate. These parts of a block are really quite different from each other.

@sarpnt

let me introduce the worst block in snap.

set my temporary? to 0. really? are you sure about that? this isn't like a text language where you have an = operator and no expectation to make things into natural sentences. this isn't like a text language where you want to reuse syntax and avoid keywords for backwards compatibility and variable names. why is this here. it's a boolean and you don't even get the toggle. you have to go into the operators category just to get the boolean to put in it. it's not even a real variable. you can only set it to false, and after you set it to false you can't set it to true again. the matching reporter is in the sensing category, also called "my temporary?", hidden in a dropdown.

@bh

This is useful feedback. Jens and I have been having some discussions about hiding things in dropdowns versus adding new blocks. (The LENGTH block drives me crazy, for example.) Some of the awkwardness in this particular case comes from extending things we inherited from Scratch. We put the MY reporter in Sensing because it was a lot like other reporters about global status, such as the time blocks. Maybe we should have put it in Motion or Pen instead; those are more sprite-specific. Doing the corresponding setting in the SET block is, I agree, a bit of a stretch, but it already knew how to set sprite-local variables, and there weren't any sprite-local setters anywhere else. But I agree that those options aren't very discoverable. And I hadn't thought about the part about having to go to Operators to get a Boolean constant!

I vote yes to a new block! This would also fix the problem I mentioned here, which still hasn't been fixed.