41–50 of 63 posts
It's good to see Microsoft pursue the field of educational programming further. I remember another MS project (which I just had to look up). It was called MakeCode https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/makecode and I remember it because they had a nice Minecraft integration. Well... it still exists: https://minecraft.makecode.com/ So to go on a bit of a rant: there's Scratch, MakeCode, Tilecode now, on top of "fantasy cons…
It's good to see Microsoft pursue the field of educational programming further. I remember another MS project (which I just had to look up). It was called MakeCode https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/makecode and I remember it because they had a nice Minecraft integration. Well... it still exists: https://minecraft.makecode.com/ So to go on a bit of a rant: there's Scratch, MakeCode, Tilecode now, on top of "fantasy cons…
This is a fascinating pairing to what the block editors they have for micro:bit. I wonder if the new micro:bit will work with it. Current hardware list: https://arcade.makecode.com/hardware https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24763120
Curious if this could be a good way for kids to learn programming. Does anyone have experience with this (or similar technologies) and children aged 7-10?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a side effect of it being a research project. It's interesting to me because I've worked in this space (I designed and built the visual scripting system for Facebook Horizon) but otherwise I agree. Kids and non-programmers won't understand this
It's trying very hard to sound smart. But "...something with a non-empty include set that contains only x..." is the same as "...something that includes x and nothing else..." There's this quote from a famous (in strictly relative terms) judge on the German Supreme Court: A good lawyer or judge will, according to him, "think like a philosopher and talk like a peasant!". Of the three other possibilities, two are still…
In fact, your own quote speaks to this: when you're thinking like a philosopher, it's easy to also speak like a philosopher; what takes effort is to speak like a peasant (and we've all had similar experiences with technical jargon in our own field, and having to translate that to a layperson). You can certainly accuse them of not having tried hard to translate it to simpler language, but it's an unwarranted accusation to say they're "trying very hard to sound smart" when they're using language that is similar to their own thought processes, and hence is probably easier to write in.
Reminds me of a scene in "I, Robot" (the movie):
Del Spooner: So, Dr. Calvin, what exactly do you do around here?
Dr. Susan Calvin: My general fields are advanced robotics and psychiatry. Although, I specialize in hardware-to-wetware interfaces in an effort to advance U.S.R.'s robotic anthropomorphization program.
Del Spooner: So, what exactly do you do around here?
Dr. Susan Calvin: I make the robots seem more human.
Del Spooner: Now wasn't that easier to say?
Dr. Susan Calvin: Not really. No.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's trying very hard to sound smart. But "...something with a non-empty include set that contains only x..." is the same as "...something that includes x and nothing else..." There's this quote from a famous (in strictly relative terms) judge on the German Supreme Court: A good lawyer or judge will, according to him, "think like a philosopher and talk like a peasant!". Of the three other possibilities, two are still…
This sort of comment is often similar to a North American hearing a British person speaking in their natural accent, and going "why are you trying so hard to sound fancy, dude?" In fact, your own quote speaks to this: when you're thinking like a philosopher, it's easy to also speak like a philosopher; what takes effort is to speak like a peasant (and we've all had similar experiences with technical jargon in our own…
With Christmas coming up soonish, and many of us going to be locked in at home (even more than ever before), there's a device I can recommend that is fun to build and reasonably fun to build on. It's basically a GameBoy (and runs emulators for it and other devices) for a laughably low price: https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-go/ (first link I found, there may be better ones — I bought it in Europe, where a few o…
The most difficult part, during the assembly process, was connecting the "ribbon" from the main board to the screen. Be careful as it is way too easy to lock the ribbon than to unlock it from the socket.
Not all games are working, but I managed to run both Mario and Wario (GBC) on it. Some games are not working, some you can play but the save feature is not working. The battery life is impressive, comparing to my smartphone.
I had great experiences using a 'game maker' on my childhood (RPG Maker 3 on PS2). However, I couldn't share what I made, so I started seeing the hours of work I'd need to make something substantial as a waste. I think having an easy way to share your game should be a priority. Clearly the web can be used to emulate and share almost anything now, so some kind of exporting system and web player would be ideal.
Dreams on PS4 has a complex sharing backend and the PS4 also let's you share directly to social media. https://indreams.me/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those don't have GPIO pins, the Odroid Go does. There's something inherently charming about being able to run emulated games on a microcontroller. Also, because it's an ESP32, it supports Arduino so playing around with programming it is fairly straightforward. The Go has good battery life, instant-on, and has a certain DIY spirit. I don't know if it's possible to run MakeCode programs directly on the Odroid Go but it…
You're speaking my language. This is a shameless self plug but we - that is Pimoroni - are working on 32blit which is an STM32F750-based microcontroller games console that should be up for general sale soooon - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pimoroni/32blit-retro-i... Our beta backer tier have been godlike in their ability to make the STM32 do things I'd never thought we'd see... much less see before it's even…