microBlocks to .HEX format and other EMBEDDING ideas

[Turgut Guneysu]

Hi John,

As I was working on some MakeCode tutorials, I came across the ability of MakeCode programs to be EMBEDDED as:

• CODE: show program blocks
• EDITOR: takes you to the MakeCode with program loaded
• SIMULATOR: embeds the simulator in web page and runs selected program in the Simulator

My questions are (Even though I anticipate the answer to be a “no”):

1. What is the likelihood of microBlocks programs to be turned in .HEX format files for execution in the simulator?
2. Is there a way to provide an embedded version of the microBlocks to enhance tutorial experiences?
3. OR - would it be possible to publish a microBlocks code ( entire program or executable block fragments) and when clicked have it open in the uBlocks IDE with it loaded.

Thanks, Turgut

‌

[John Maloney]

We don’t have a micro:bit simulator and I doubt the MakeCode simulator is a full ARM simulator capable of running the MicroBlocks virtual machine, so (1) and (2) would be really difficult.

Regarding (3): On some platforms (e.g ChromeOS) double-clicking on a .ubp file will launch MicroBlocks. On MacOS, you can manually associate an app with a given file extension. I’m not sure if our Windows installer adds the appropriate registry entries to launch MicroBlocks when you double-click on a project, but you may be able to set that up manually. Once set up, people could download a MicroBlocks project (.ubp) file and double-click on it to launch it. Project files can include executable block fragments.

So, one way to make a tutorial is to create a project with bunch of commented code fragments and invite people to explore it. Our colleague Kathy Giori from Mozilla has done some tutorials that way.