Google Blockly: New Visual Programming Language

Google Blockly

Google Blockly is a new programming language. It’s actually a visual tool that runs in your browser (no plugin needed): to code something, just drag-n-drop blocks fill the fields of the blocks, and connect them according to your algorithm. Google Blockly can export your block-based code to JavaScript, Dart, and Python.

Here are the main features of Google Blockly:

  • Execute in a web-browser. No downloads or plugins needed.
  • Exportable code. Users can extract their programs as JavaScript, Dart, Python or other language so that when they outgrow Blockly they can keep learning.
  • Highly capable language. With the ability to calculate standard deviation using a single block, Blockly is not a toy language.
  • Blockly in itself is not an educational platform. Blockly is an editor that may be used as part of an educational platform, or as part of a business suite, or as part of a gaming system, etc.

Google Blockly is a not a true new language: it takes its source from App Inventor:

How does Blockly relate to Scratch, App Inventor, etc.?
The short answer is that Blockly was influenced by App Inventor and App Inventor was influenced by Scratch. Rather than being a stand-alone program, Blockly is a code editor that can be embedded into a larger project. For more information, see the page of Alternatives to Blockly.


I quickly (…) tested Blockly in this demo:

Google Blockly test

Here is the code in Python:

Google Blockly test

Look at the difference between the simple Python code and the blockly visual code… 😉

9 thoughts on “Google Blockly: New Visual Programming Language”

  1. onlyLinuxLovesUBack

    can’t wait for OpenGL Geometry Instancing Test
    blocky edition so I can run it on linux 🙂

  2. gigaherz

    Oh scratch that previous comment, didn’t read the text that was set to italics on a lighter gray, for some reason…

  3. GPUToaster

    Not too intuitive…..
    I find the Visual programming in games more logical. Long back I tried the Quest3D tool, which has a very powerful visual programming tool…

    …. newz looking forward for more updates from google on Blockly.

  4. Ricardo

    This is not Google Blockly, it’s just Blockly. Google is only hosting the project on Google Code, it’s not otherwise related to its development.

  5. Lightness1024

    well, good thing you compared it to an equivalent in python so we can clearly see that it is much easier to read in python.

Comments are closed.