More applicable for kids, although certainly of interest to adults too: Minecraft. Any interest in Redstone will push players towards learning the basics of binary logic, without even realising what they're learning will be applicable down the line. Plus, it has (I assume) the largest modding scene of any game - there's a lot of people out there who have learned Java just so they can target Minecraft/CraftBukkit.
Ask HN: Which programming games helped you become a better programmer?
41–50 of 90 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which programming games helped you become a better programmer?
#42I like CTF stuff. I tried this one called yolo space hacker: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1341450/Yolo_Space_Hacker... I like it because now I have something gameified to recommend to people who want to break into computer security. It was REALLY easy for me as someone who's been mired in that world for a long time, though I'm probably going to buy the other missions to see if they pose more of a challenge. Mak…
How does the game helps to get into computer security?
Re: Ask HN: Which programming games helped you become a better programmer?
#43While this game doesn’t teach you to code, I would argue that Portal (1 and 2), teach you how to solve programming like problems.
Re: Ask HN: Which programming games helped you become a better programmer?
#44I never understood the point of games that emulate the programming experience. Whenever I play them I feel like I'm wasting my time and I could be making something real.
If an exercise kit is well done, it condenses experience. Think of a mathematics exercise book - gradual progress from basics to limit revealing tricks and consolidating artfulness exercise by exercise. It's doable.
Re: Ask HN: Which programming games helped you become a better programmer?
#45I’ve developed Recursive [0], a programming puzzles game that helps understand and master recursion, which is, I think, a topic that many developers have difficulty with.
I’ll be glad to send an AppStore promo code for those who’d like to play it for free (email in website [1]).
Also, I don’t use any analytics tools. So your direct feedback is welcome and highly appreciated.
Re: Ask HN: Which programming games helped you become a better programmer?
#46I started programming with “learn to program basic”, a series of animated programming tutorials in BASIC lightly disguised as a game.
Re: Ask HN: Which programming games helped you become a better programmer?
#47I never understood the point of games that emulate the programming experience. Whenever I play them I feel like I'm wasting my time and I could be making something real.
This is where modding scenes shine, you learn a language because you wanna edit a game. My IT career comes entirely from wanting to run my own private WoW server, the open-source ones were written in C++ so I started with that, might not have been the best first language but at least it was something. Now I work with DevOps.
I did manage to run a server with about 140 peak online simultaneously where the USP was a unique PvP experience with cross-faction battlegrounds (to my knowledge my implementation was the first open source one), respawns in FFA areas and such for classic (1.12.1) WoW.
None of this was ever really "real", but it taught me a fair deal about both computers, programming, running a community and life in general.
The open-source project for running WoW servers I used was "cmangos"(gh).
Re: Ask HN: Which programming games helped you become a better programmer?
#48For 2, Codingame's bot programming challenges are excellent. To get high on the leaderboards you need to write super well optimized code and have clever ideas, which is about as fun as a programming challenge gets. To get started, I'd recommend their TRON lightcycle game, which has a great combination of approachable ruleset and deep gameplay. https://www.codingame.com/multiplayer/bot-programming/line-r... If you pre…
+1 for CodinGame, I loved their Sprint 2022 challenge (which is now available as multiplayer game). This challenge motivated me to purchase a book about writing intelligent agents and to start studying the subject more in depth.
Re: Ask HN: Which programming games helped you become a better programmer?
#49Core War: >Core War is a 1984 programming game created by D. G. Jones and A. K. Dewdney in which two or more battle programs (called "warriors") compete for control of a virtual computer. These battle programs are written in an abstract assembly language called Redcode. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_War
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Re: Ask HN: Which programming games helped you become a better programmer?
#50I'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…
Adding to the Zachtronics' game TIS-100, there's also EXAPUNKS which is a fun programming puzzle game. You write programs for one or more bots which can then spawn more and communicate with each other. I haven't finished the game because I just play it on random occasions, but the challenges are interesting. There are also some head-to-head challenges with other players that fit a bit into the Core War vein, trying to maintain control of a television broadcast or similar things with points given for how long your video plays and points deducted for things like killing your opponent's process outright (versus just more clever and faster programs).