Unreal Engine: Why Aren't We Teaching Programming This Way?

Have you ever programmed? Do you remember how difficult it is to learn from scratch?

Writing the code and reading about new concepts isn't the hard part. It's hard, yes, but there are Youtube tutorials and examples to follow along, but what happens when you get your first error? You're so incredibly frustrated, that you want to give up. Do you go through forums and search through your entire history?

For so long in life, I've been searching for visual code like scratch, but more useful for a good portion of my life. I could write Python statements and write loops, but debugging was terrible.

All this to say - for computer science programs. UE4's blueprints are a great way to write code for any new programmer. Nodes are drag-and-drop style. You connect them to each other, and instead of getting a "list[arr] cannot be cast to string," it won't let you connect the pins. Blueprints are not easy, but it's a quick and efficient yet powerful way to program. Learning will teach you about arrays, structs, enums, different data types, and how do all of the basics. Text-based, compiled languages are still important, but this is a wonderful start.

If I ever teach a programming language, I'll start with this.