When comparing Scratch vs ENIGMA Development Environment, the Slant community recommends Scratch for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” Scratch is ranked 42nd while ENIGMA Development Environment is ranked 60th. The most important reason people chose Scratch is:
Code is represented as [visual building blocks](http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-use-Scratch/) that makes it easy to understand how a program is put together.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Visual
Code is represented as visual building blocks that makes it easy to understand how a program is put together.
Pro Great starting point for kids
Scratch was developed specifically for kids ages 8 and up as an exciting way to introduce them to technology. It's designed to be easy to learn, but still provides good depth in computational thinking.
Pro Easy to learn
Scratch is designed to teach computational thinking rather than focus on specific syntax. It was designed specifically to be easy to learn for anyone over the age of 8.
Pro Highly structured
The language is highly structured. Therefore, it gives you the essentials of how to think like a programmer and teaches you good programming practices from early on, so you could write clean, working and readable code in the future.
Pro No need to be able to type
Pro Can be used to create games
Pro Raw C++ power and GML accessibility
Almost full support for GML,
The ability to create and access C++ types, templates, and functions, compile DLLs and other C/C++ scripts
Pro Cross platform
Support for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Pro Compatible with GameMaker
Enigma can support over 90% of gamemaker's GML language
Pro Friendly user interface
besides the powerful combination between GML and C++, beginners can also use drag and dropping.
Pro Free and Open Source
Pro Faster than GameMaker
Written in C++, many features have been demonstrated running much faster than interpreted equivalents in GameMaker (up to 10-20 times faster than GM 8.1).
Pro Under active development
Changes are made daily to add new functions/fixing bugs.
Pro Helpful error messages
A full stack trace with available cores and memory information as well as operating system and Java version including file names and number is generated whenever an exception is encountered, with a handy link to submit the issue to GitHub.
Cons
Con For kids
For kids.
Con Won't get you a job
Scratch is not a language used in the workplace. Instead it teaches computational thinking, helping to create a foundation to aid in learning other languages.
Con Does not teach you programming
Learning Scratch might help you if you have high difficulty with logical thinking. However, starting with a proper programming language, especially an easy one, will give you the benefits of starting with something like Scratch and everything else.
Con Strange OOP
Scratch has a very strange implementation of OOP that is sprite based, and will become very confusing when you move to other languages.
Con Weird
It's straight up weird.
Con A few bugs & glitches
Because Enigma is under very rapid development, with new functions added almost daily, some bugs and unexaplainable glitches can happen, though they also gets patched quickly.
Con No code refactoring
Like any C++ based programs, the ability to refactor is limited. However, the new Ide for engima will support a few refactoring cababilities