

UCSD Computer Scientists Develop Video Game that Teaches How to Program in Java - dsinha
http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=1347

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grannyg00se
This is outstanding!! Man, I would've loved to have this when I was in grade
school. I remember being very excited about my one hour per week in front of
the LOGO turtle. This goes way beyond. I'm not a big fan of java, but learning
how to program in the same language your parents may be using at grown up work
is pretty damn awesome.

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olivier1664
The game feeling looks like more a modern LOGO game than a World of Warcraft
game. The quest seems to be about moving a stone from A to B. It does not
seems the player will become more and more powerfull while he grows its own
library. It will be so fun to craft its set of functions ang go cast it in
some PVP events. Maybe the Notch's new game (<http://0x10c.com>) will provide
this king of "Master of Hackers" feeling.

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aroberge
A really nice idea ... but why, oh why did they have to choose a language that
has a lot of extra scaffolding like Java instead of something simpler like
Python, or Ruby?

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chubbard
There it is. I wondered how far I'd have to read before we had a Java hate
comment. Never fails.

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aroberge
It`s not a Java hate comment: I'm writing this as an educator with 20 years
teaching experience who has learned that some languages are better teaching
ones than others. Java has its place ... but another language would be better
suited there.

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jholman
There's a lot to complain about with Java, but one part that IS great is that
applications generally port pretty easily between environments (everywhere
interesting for consumer software except iOS). Also this depends on Unity3d...
guess what else is multi-platform! (including Win/OSX/Linux/web/iOS/Android)

I trust, then, that there's a good reason why this claims to be dependant on
OSX. Seems to have something to do with this June (Java in Unity) thing.

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mratzloff
This is a great idea. The feeling of being able to do _anything_ combined with
reasonable limitations (ideally invisible) to focus the player's energy is
extremely engaging--perfect for teaching.

And I've always thought of magic spells in fantasy as a kind of hack using a
secret, natural programming language. :-)

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stuffihavemade
So, I just tried this out. I think it would be a lot more user friendly if you
could see what "spells" are available when making a new spell (i.e. have auto
completion in the text editor). It's a pain to have to look at the spell book,
and limits experimentation.

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zmonkeyz
This used to be called Robocode back in the day.

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gamegoblin
I came here to mention Robocode. I played the hell out of that back in the
day. I am currently working on an indie game (RTS) that includes AI in
singleplayer mode, and also allows you to program your own AIs by making a
class that inherits from my abstract AI class which gives you access to an AI
API. With Robocode there is a pretty high barrier to entry, but my goal is to
have the game be entirely playable and a fun game, which then entices the user
to go mess with the AI code.

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Lost_BiomedE
For Mac OSX 10.5 and Above.

I will have to check this out when I get access to a Mac that I can install it
on. I loved the vim game at vim-adventures.com

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mycodebreaks
If you haven't heard about Greenfoot, it's a project with similar idea.
<http://www.greenfoot.org>

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fchollet
It's not about easiness --learning to code is probably simpler than learning
to play such a game.

It's a about motivation.

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joe24pack
Code Spells? Sheesh, sounds a _lot_ like Land of Lisp, but done with Java.
Wonder what Conrad Barski thinks of this.

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CurtMonash
I'm trying to envision the MMO version of this, with special reference to
(dungeon) raids.

"Leroy, you'll levitate the troll for 15 iterations. Zelda, you'll comment out
the basilisk. Everybody, now's the time to warm up your caches. Ready check
... OK then. 0, 1, 2, 3 ... Go go go!!"

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jared314
I wonder if you could write an extension to an existing game/mmo to use the
same code-as-spell system.

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schiang
super cool!

