Show HN: A Forth-inspired game to teach kids programming
matchthestack.com
Show HN: A Forth-inspired game to teach kids programming
1–10 of 23 posts
Re: Show HN: A Forth-inspired game to teach kids programming
#2I've sometimes wondered about using Forth-style stack manipulation as the basis for a game, and it's nice to see someone do it.
These are the things that weren't clear to me, and that I had to spend a couple of minutes randomly clicking around to figure out (bearing in mind I'm somebody who already knows what a stack machine is supposed to be doing):
- "proceed to the next level" means: click the up-arrow at the bottom right of the window.
- Levels are completed by filling in the grey tiles in the centre of the window, and running the program.
- Filling in those tiles is done by draging smaller grey tiles from the top-left corner.
- The program can be run by clicking the right-arrow at the bottom of the window.
- The first proper level (called "0_0", as far as I can tell) is already complete, the reason you can't do anything is because there's nothing to be done.
Re: Show HN: A Forth-inspired game to teach kids programming
#3I like the principle, but sorry to be neg, but the execution is awful.
Stacks don't slide sideways.
They pop and push and operate. That's what you should animate, the actions.
Having the operator in the top left is very odd.
What's that number for? The speed of the animation. Why bother, it is meaningless.
Re: Show HN: A Forth-inspired game to teach kids programming
#4"please proceed to the next level"
And no instructions on how to even do that. Plus it's an image, instead of text. This is not for kids.
Re: Show HN: A Forth-inspired game to teach kids programming
#5As someone who doesn’t know Forth and is relatively new to programming, I have no idea what is going on here.
Re: Show HN: A Forth-inspired game to teach kids programming
#6I've sometimes wondered about using Forth-style stack manipulation as the basis for a game, and it's nice to see someone do it. These are the things that weren't clear to me, and that I had to spend a couple of minutes randomly clicking around to figure out (bearing in mind I'm somebody who already knows what a stack machine is supposed to be doing): - "proceed to the next level" means: click the up-arrow at the bott…
Thanks... was lost without these instructions.
Re: Show HN: A Forth-inspired game to teach kids programming
#7As someone who doesn’t know Forth and is relatively new to programming, I have no idea what is going on here.
I vaguely remember a little Forth, and I had no idea what was going on either.
Re: Show HN: A Forth-inspired game to teach kids programming
#8As someone who doesn’t know Forth and is relatively new to programming, I have no idea what is going on here.
I vaguely remember a little Forth, and I had no idea what was going on either.
This does not seem to have anything to do with forth. This seems to be a game about manipulating a stack.
Re: Show HN: A Forth-inspired game to teach kids programming
#9I like the principle, but sorry to be neg, but the execution is awful. Stacks don't slide sideways. They pop and push and operate. That's what you should animate, the actions . Having the operator in the top left is very odd. What's that number for? The speed of the animation. Why bother, it is meaningless.
I didn't think it was that bad - just needs a tutorial or at least some kind of explanation. And some tooltips... I kind of enjoyed it in a weird way.
Disclaimer: have done a few years of PostScript programming.
Re: Show HN: A Forth-inspired game to teach kids programming
#10So clicked randomly on the icons on the first page and having clicked all of them discovered that that the up arrow 'started' the game.
I randomly clicked on the stacks, tried to drag the stacks, clicked on all the icons, found that the right arrow seemed to move the left stack towards the right. After several clicks I apparently won.
I will not be showing this to my kids.