So apparently there’s some guerilla marketing going around promoting a website that I previously haven’t heard of. CodeGuppy is a text-based sketch platform that I assume supposedly rivals code.org, the two are very similar. The differences I see between the two are very subtle and transitioning between the two isn’t that difficult. Now here are some pros I see in CodeGuppy that code.org doesn’t have:
- It allows the use of operators like
let - Can do a lot of drawing without slowing down the program
- Has buttons, text boxes, stuff like that
- Multiple scenes
- Larger canvas (800, 600)
The feature that appealed to me the most was that it ran faster, this would allow me to create complex programs without having the frame rate dropping
There are some features missing as well.
- Does not have blocks. I don’t know how anyone sees this as a positive. Code.org allows both blocks and text mode while CodeGuppy only has text.
- No actual public gallery; Scratch, Khan Academy, and code.org all have a public gallery. As far as I can tell. There isn’t a public gallery for CodeGuppy
- No debug console. I believe the ‘alternative’ to debug consoles was to just use println
- Only p5.js sketches: On code.org there is app lab, game lab, sprite lab, web lab, artist, and a whole bunch more.
- I can’t find what I’m looking for. Say I wanted to store an rgb value. Well I can’t because rgb isn’t a function! It also sucks that I had to go into a tutorial to find out how to get the position of my mouse.
- Not many sprites/backgrounds/drawing functions: Maybe there will be more added eventually
- Alot of the tutorials are just a huge chunk of code that forces the student to “find out” what it means.
If you would like to switch to CodeGuppy right now. I don’t suggest it: CodeGuppy is not a better, or different alternative than code.org.
No, coding in text instead of blocks on a platform that is essentially a glorified p5.js editor isn’t a solution to kids finding coding tedious.