

Show HN: Kodable - Programming Fundamentals for Five Year Olds - grechen
http://www.surfscore.com/#kodable

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pydave
It's not clear from the screenshots how the arrows map to the fuzz movement.
I'd expect it to be like Google's Turing machine doodle:
<http://www.google.com/doodles/alan-turings-100th-birthday>

But I'm not 5. Maybe kids will want to know what yellow does enough to fiddle
around and find out.

Thinking about it some more, I guess the clear background means go until you
hit a wall, and the colours mean go until you hit this colour. Better
iconography might help ( ->| instead of -> ). I'd expect kids will grasp the
meaning of symbols really well, but may be easily frustrated if the symbols
don't differ how they expect.

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TeMPOraL
> I'd expect kids will grasp the meaning of symbols really well, but may be
> easily frustrated if the symbols don't differ how they expect.

The game is, in principle, just a REPL. Kids will learn quickly by erring and
iterating on their mistakes. ;-).

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jcl
Looks cute, but it would be nice if there was more information on how the game
worked -- or a gameplay video.

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ctdonath
It's free to get, quick to download, and easy to start playing. A video is
almost a waste of time.

Summary: using symbols, construct a "program" that guides an avatar thru a
maze. Complete one maze to access the next, more complicated, maze. It's cute,
simple, and (almost) instantly understandable by even a 3 year old.

~~~
jcl
Thanks for the description... Some of us do not have iPads. ;)

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ctdonath
Great idea, great start, kids (3 & 4) are excited to play - didn't want to go
to bed.

A few bugs, like a misplaced arrow sometimes can't be moved any more.

Please make clear why a level failed! The board just kinda disappears the
moment the "program" "crashes".

One big recurring issue with games for toddlers: make it very tolerant of
multiple touches. Kids often will touch other fingers to the screen, lean side
of hand on it, or put other hand on. Try to identify which touch point is the
"real" one and focus on that, ignoring others.

Great job! Looking forward to how far the kids take this. Several times a day
they ask for "ghost game" (DragonBox, which starts with a ghost as a logo);
they'll be asking for this one too.

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Osiris
I'd love to comment on it if I could actually use it. Please developers, have
pity on the Android tablet users. There's only a few million of us (if you
include Kindle Fire).

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captaintacos
I'd like to comment too, but the game doesn't show up in the Japanese
AppStore. Please make it available worldwide (even if they are not localized).

Developers: You are all losing sales of expats and people who do speak English
outside the US every single time you don't release apps worldwide.

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forgueam
Great app. It's a little buggy, but my four year old caught on quickly and
made it through the first 5-6 levels before I had to take it away so she could
go to bed. As a developer, this made me a very proud daddy!

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wslh
I find easier to write commands in logo (forward 10) than to write commands in
a graphical way. My cousin played adventure games at 4 with the help of a
paper with commands that he typed.

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notb
I agree with you somewhat. Turing machines are difficult to abstract into
sensible 'commands' or functions without some kind of compiler or intermediate
step. The trouble here is that kids get no exposure to abstraction and
functions, which I'd argue is more important and fundamental than conditionals
and loops, which are really just specialized functions at heart.

