this isnt a project, but I don’t know where else to put it
Hello! I’m bored, and what better way to spend it is research the origins of Snap! (from what I see, of course). Get some Snap! corn, and get ready! (its a play on the word “popcorn”)
I. The Beginnings
It all started way back in 2007 when Scratch 1.0, the VERY first version of Scratch was released. It was very basic, pixelated, and ran on Squeak’s Morphic framework:
Now, there were many people who worked to make Scratch. However, one of them–and you may know this name–was called Jens Mönig. Now who’s that.. the creator of Snap! of course! But currently we aren’t closed to that.
Many Scratch versions came along, until finally Scratch 1.2.1 got released. It was mostly the same as Scratch 1.0, so I won’t put a screenshot here; but this version was what Jens Mönig decided to base “Chirp” (the first Scratch mod!) on:
Chirp didn’t do much (it didn’t add any features, it was backward compatible with Scratch 1.2.1), really the major thing it added was exporting scripts as XML, but it was still a stepping stone.
II. Build Your Own Blocks!
Finally, on October 21, 2008, BYOB 1.0 was released. BYOB 1.0 was a fork of Scratch, just like Chirp; but it did much more, the most of which was.. custom blocks! Hence the name BYOB, Build Your Own Blocks. I couldn’t exactly find a version of this, but heres a screenshot I found on the wiki:
BYOB 2.0 released, which was rebased on Scratch 1.4; and added nested sprites as the main new feature, and then finally BYOB 3.0 (the last Scratch-based version, and the last one still mainly named under “BYOB”) released, with a whole lot of new features. First class procedures (rings in Snap!), first class lists, and true and false boolean blocks. It went all the way up to BYOB 3.1.1 from May 19th 2011.
Note that the main goal of BYOB was to have some of the features from it implemented to normal Scratch. Now only a part of this came true, Scratch 2.0 introduced custom blocks (although not as complex as BYOB blocks, only command blocks).
III. Snap!
Now, for the part you’ve all been waiting for. In the May of 2015, the first version of modern Snap! that we know today, using JS with the canvas element, was released. Snap! 4.0. This version was much faster, and could easily be accessed in the browser (just like Scratch 2.0 and now Scratch 3.0). The main features introduced with this version was first class continuations, web access, and mainly the ability to write custom code in Javascript!
Over the multiple years Snap! kept getting updates, getting look changes, the community website being created when Snap! 4.0 was released. Multiple mods of Snap! have came about in recent years, Snavanced!, probably some others, and Split! im not biased.
Hope you enjoyed that! That was a lot of typing.
i think joining snap! in 2025 Feb 14, 2025 to be exact was the best decision i ever made this community is great okay 2831funiscodingt is out