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HarvardX: CS50's Introduction to Programming with Scratch

A gentle introduction to programming that prepares you for subsequent courses in coding.

CS50's Introduction to Programming with Scratch
3 weeks
2–6 hours per week
Self-paced
Progress at your own speed
Free
Optional upgrade available

There is one session available:

174,704 already enrolled! After a course session ends, it will be archivedOpens in a new tab.
Starts Mar 28
Ends Dec 31

About this course

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An introduction to programming using Scratch, a visual programming language via which aspiring programmers can write code by dragging and dropping graphical blocks (that resemble puzzle pieces) instead of typing out text. Used at the start of Harvard College's introductory course in computer science, CS50, Scratch was designed at MIT's Media Lab, empowering students with no prior programming experience to design their own animations, games, interactive art, and stories. Using Scratch, this course introduces students to fundamentals of programming, found not only in Scratch itself but in traditional text-based languages (like Java and Python) as well. Topics include: functions, which are instructions that perform tasks; return values, which are results that functions provide; conditions, via which programs can decide whether or not to perform some action; loops, via which programs can take action again and again; variables, via which programs can remember information; and more. Ultimately, this course prepares students for subsequent courses in programming.

Scratch is developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. See scratch.mit.edu.

At a glance

  • Language: English
  • Video Transcript: English
  • Associated skills:Visual Programming Language (VPL), Python (Programming Language), Java (Programming Language), Animations, Typing, Computer Science

What you'll learn

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  • functions
  • events
  • values
  • conditions
  • loops
  • variables
  • abstraction

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