Renaming/deleting variables leads to errors

[Clinton Blackmore]

Here is an e-mail from Heino on March 5, 2012.

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Hi Clinton,
last Saturday, we were successful with Enchanting during the RoboCup-Junior
German Open 2012 regional competition in the Greenfield league!!! As the only
primary school (2nd to 4th class) within the 10 teams we've won the 3rd and 4th
place.

Let me thank you for your wonderful work, which made our students strong!

One thing I like to request for, which hindered the work in the last weeks for
the students and for me as well and which finally prevents us from changing the
developed script during the competition (we didn't found the error fast enough):

Aspecially when a variable (local and global ones) is renamed or removed, when
they are still referred somewhere, some cryptic error message (red box) occurs,
which reports some Java errors. But within this red box, there is no reference
to the place is mentioned, where the error occurs, nor the symbol name, which
could not translated.

- In case of renaming it would be the best, if the references are renamed as well.
- In case of removing it would be the best, if the block, where the error occurs
is marked somehow.

I don't know, if this would be a difficult task. But for the students it is
extremely difficult to debug these kind of errors. Aspecially as normally
Scratch does not allow any syntax errors.

One tip for other competitions: Our rechargeable batteries failed during the
semi finale, causing the ultra sonic senor failing, because there was not enough
time to recharge them. So our tip is: Take normal Batteries along.

br

heino