Making Blockly Universally Accessible
April 1st, 2014 | Published in Google Research
We work hard to make our products accessible to people everywhere, in every culture. Today we’re expanding our outreach efforts to support a traditionally underserved community -- those who call themselves "tlhIngan."
Google's Blockly programming environment is used in K-12 classrooms around the world to teach programming. But the world is not enough. Students on Qo'noS have had difficulty learning to code because most of the teaching tools aren't available in their native language. Additionally, many existing tools are too fragile for their pedagogical approach. As a result, Klingons have found it challenging to enter computer science. This is reflected in the fact that less than 2% of Google engineers are Klingon.
Today we launch a full translation of Blockly in Klingon. It incorporates Klingon cultural norms to facilitate learning in this unique population:
- Blockly has no syntax errors. This reduces frustration, and reduces the number of computers thrown through bulkheads.
- Variables are untyped. Type errors can too easily be perceived as a challenge to the honor of a student's family (and we’ve seen where that ends).
- Debugging and bug reports have been omitted, our research indicates that in the event of a bug, they prefer the entire program to just blow up.
Get a little keyboard dirt under your fingernails. Learn that although ghargh is delicious, code structure should not resemble it. And above all, be proud that tlhIngan maH. Qapla'!
You can try out the demo here or get involved here.