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The Unix Pipe Card Game

punkx.org

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Re: The Unix Pipe Card Game

#11

Post by jackdoe »

xandrius wrote: post #10

Interesting concept but in the current format it feels like a game to bring out exactly once with a very specific group (or perhaps an unexpecting child), play for 10-15min, smile to oneself and then put the deck where these sorts of games go die. If it is attempted to bring it out again with the same group, I'd expect a response similar to "Again? Didn't we play it already?" with some disappointment. At least it was…

Unix Pipes is a "play once" game, just so you can try some ideas, then try them out on the computer.

I used to randomly set HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon Shell to cmd.exe on my daughter's laptop so she can run programs from there, e.g. go the discord directory and start discord from there.

Then I made unix pipes just to help her with https://overthewire.org/wargames/bandit/ and so we can discuss how do you make "programs that do not know how they will be used", e.g. the programmer of "sort" does not know how it will be used, and you can create ridiculous pipe chains with the cards, just for fun.

Of course I made other random tasks, e.g. we take a random book and we start "catting" and "grepping" it

Most of the games i made on https://punkx.org are like that, i am just trying to teach her something and i need a bit of physical help to "get out of the computer"

The only real card game is http://punkx.org/punk0 which is like uno with state and I play it often with friends, and https://punkx.org/overflow/ which is super intense depending who you play with.

Re: The Unix Pipe Card Game

#14

Post by nomadygnt »

d-us-vb wrote: post #9
SamBam wrote: post #7

As a science teacher and former software dev, I find this totally cute, and I understand exactly why the creator chose to make it a physical card game. That said, I do think the translation into a physical card game means that kids aren't getting the experimentation and near-instant feedback that they'd be getting if they were doing this digitally. In order for a kid to "win," they either have to already know, or exp…

As a young Linux user I always hated the experimentation aspect because usually it meant just straight up getting the command wrong 5 times before trying to read the man page, thinking I understood what the man page meant, trying again another 5 times and then giving up. This idea of experimenting and getting instant feedback is just survivorship bias for a certain type of person, not “the way we ought to teach Unix…

Maybe I am wrong about this but I think a lot of recent research has shown that trial and error is a great way to learn almost everything. Even just making an educated guess, even if it is completely wrong, before learning something makes it much more likely that you remember and understand the thing that you learn. It’s a painful and time-consuming way to learn. But very effective.

Maybe Linux commands is a little different but I kinda doubt it. Errors and feedback are the way to learn, as long as you can endure the pain of getting to the correct result.

Re: The Unix Pipe Card Game

#20

Post by racl101 »

GNOMES wrote: post #17

This gets shared a ton, but the old Bell Labs video from 4:56 to 10:52 is still the best way I have seen pipes explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc4ROCJYbm0

It's amazing how these ideas conceived almost 50 years ago still are helpful for new computer users today. Just goes to show how well planned it was.
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