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Kaboom – JavaScript game programming library and environment

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Re: Kaboom – JavaScript game programming library and environment

#3

Post by lrmunoz »

It seems this is aimed at young people learning how to program. My main problem with using Javascript as the first programming language to learn is the asynchronous callback paradigm, I believe it's too complicated a concept to teach in the very beginning (and you can't get around that with Javascript).

When I evaluated different languages / environments to start teaching programming to my daughters I decided not to use Javascript because of that, chose Python instead (and now I'm also considering making games with Roblox, which is based on Lua. The dev environment is quite complex but with supervision Lua is a nice & simple programming language)

Re: Kaboom – JavaScript game programming library and environment

#4

Post by grenoire »

I wish I had such tools when I was growing up building games! I had to battle ncurses, Allegro, OpenGL, and many more lower-level tech just to get some basic I/O. I'm not too sad about it because it paved the way to my stronger understanding of computer technologies, but at the same time it took me way longer to build playable games.

I think this is a step before making Minecraft mods or Roblox games, but definitely a welcome one for the coming generation of creative kids.

Re: Kaboom – JavaScript game programming library and environment

#7

Post by hutzlibu »

lrmunoz wrote: post #3

It seems this is aimed at young people learning how to program. My main problem with using Javascript as the first programming language to learn is the asynchronous callback paradigm, I believe it's too complicated a concept to teach in the very beginning (and you can't get around that with Javascript). When I evaluated different languages / environments to start teaching programming to my daughters I decided not to…

Hm, but how does it work in python? Don't you have asynchronous calls there, too?

(my main problem with JS as a programming first language is its C-Style syntax)

Re: Kaboom – JavaScript game programming library and environment

#9

Post by bemmu »

grenoire wrote: post #4

I wish I had such tools when I was growing up building games! I had to battle ncurses, Allegro, OpenGL, and many more lower-level tech just to get some basic I/O. I'm not too sad about it because it paved the way to my stronger understanding of computer technologies, but at the same time it took me way longer to build playable games. I think this is a step before making Minecraft mods or Roblox games, but definitely…

Amos on the Amiga was pretty great. I was able to get sprites moving around, respond to mouse clicks, even some simple 3D with an extension. Admittedly never actually made a playable game, as my programming chops weren't good enough yet. There was a small community making games with it, and they would be distributed among other shareware.
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