Hah, I had a similar idea a few months back [0]. Of course, being the lazy person that I am, I tweeted about it, wrote about it in my ideas notebook, and never implemented anything.
I recall a database query tutorial on the Apple Mac in the early 90s that took the form of a detective game. With clues, you gradually refined your query. I can't find any references to it now though.
Hah, that's awesome- if anyone knows of it, would love to know the name!
I'm definitely familiar with tutorials for programming languages/tools/environments using the medium itself, as you just described - but have never seen anything in game form. Further examples appreciated!
I'm not sure about on the Mac, but that sounds like the MS Works 1.0 tutorial for the database component. The scenario was for a ski field where there had been a murder, and you had to whittle down the suspects based on the clues found.
It started out like a game. There was a grey background, then footsteps appeared, marching across the screen to gravel-crunch noises. And the queries were for guests in a hotel, IIRC.
I believe the same one was available for DOS, though my memories of the details were vague. It was for either Works or Lotus 1-2-3 and was the culmination of a series of spreadsheet training scenarios.
Yes, I agree - I think the name of the suspect should form part of the key required to decipher the solution file, so that you cannot see the solution unless your suspect is the perpetrator.
The frustration for me was gur haerfbyirq vapbafvfgrapl orgjrra gur pbssrr pyhr ng gur pevzr fprar naq Naanory'f jvgarff fgngrzrag.
Gur onevfgn ng gur pevzr fprar ercbegrqyl fnvq gung "n jbzna yrsg evtug orsber gurl urneq gur fubgf".
Zl haqrefgnaqvat: Pevzr fprar jnf gur fgerrg va sebag bs gur pbssrr cynpr.
Gur jvgarff vf gur ynfg crefba gung yrsg orsber gur fubgf (bhgfvqr) jrer sverq.
Gung fur ena nf fbba nf fur urneq gur fubgf svgf dhvgr va?
I'm a bit peeved that much of what is ROT13-ed in this thread isn't spoilers. I went through the trouble to decode it, and typically didn't find it worth the effort.
Hey, I'm the one who made this. Glad you guys liked it! This one was a bit quick and dirty, done for a workshop at the Mozilla Festival last year, I'm going to try to do another installment though!
I rarely use join and it never occurred to me. For combining the one file that had records spanning several lines, I used awk instead of grep -A as the hints suggest. Where the hints suggest a head/tail combination, I used sed. I also used sort piped to uniq in one case; combinations of those two are very often useful.
It's not cheating, it just doesn't really help you. There's a lot of noise. You have to use grep, sed, etc. to find the text that's actually important.
