Ask HN: Which programming games helped you become a better programmer?

Well, I've enjoyed these games as for fun, but they did provide an intellectual challenge: TIS-100 https://store.steampowered.com/app/370360/TIS100/ SHENZEN I/O https://store.steampowered.com/app/504210/SHENZHEN_IO/ Hacknet https://store.steampowered.com/app/365450/Hacknet/ Uplink https://store.steampowered.com/app/1510/Uplink/

As for becoming a better programmer, it's all about practice. CodeWars might be what you're looking for: https://www.codewars.com/

I'll reply mostly on 2. - most of these were already mentioned in the previous thread - [0] Grasshopper, [1] SpaceChem (awhile ago), [2] 7 billion humans (haven't finished it yet, and haven't played for a while), [3] Human Resource Machine and [4] TIS-100. They mostly help to build habits, and persistency, not just being fun.

The "real world" always provides much more interesting "gameplay", but it is sometimes with a too steep learning curve. :)

Edit: And I've been ninja'd by another user, but just remembered that there is another in my wishlist - [5] Baba is you (haven't played it, though)

[0] https://grasshopper.app/ [1] https://zachtronics.com/spacechem/ [2] https://tomorrowcorporation.com/7billionhumans [3] https://tomorrowcorporation.com/humanresourcemachine [4] https://zachtronics.com/tis-100/ [5] https://www.hempuli.com/baba/

To the list of Zachtronics games, I'll add Opus Magnum, which is the one that I found most rewarding.

Kids these days...

Go read a book!

It doesn’t seem to exactly fit your description but Python Challenge (http://www.pythonchallenge.com/) has been incredibly fun and rewarding for me back in the day.

It’s a series of riddles that are meant to be solved using the python language. It’s really old now but I’m hoping that some library specific riddles are still relevant. Apart from those few, most of them should be language agnostic as well.

I’ve always wanted to create a similar thing to replicate the experience in JS but never gotten around to it.

Edit: oh also completely agree with most of the recommendations here. Particularly with TIS-100, Factorio and Human Resource Machine.