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Games of Coding – A curated list of games that teach you a programming language

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Re: Games of Coding – A curated list of games that teach you a programming language

#21
I see you already have a pull request for TIS-100. That's the first that came to mind.

Does it make sense to break down the list by categories? For example:

- New to programming: Lightbot, Spritebox

- Reverse engineering: https://microcorruption.com, many of the Zachtronics games

And so on...

Also, here are a couple of other lists of games I've been going through:

- http://steamcommunity.com/app/375820/discussions/0/481115363...

- https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/11/09/best-programming...

Re: Games of Coding – A curated list of games that teach you a programming language

#22
post #17

I'm not sure if such games can help to learn programming. For example, Robocode is very dynamics-based and requires knowledge of control theory (which involves partial differential equations) and decision making under uncertainty. I'm doing software development for almost 10 years and yet such games are too hard for me. These games can help you to learn "AI" but not programming. It's simpler to create your own Roboco…

Maybe try a Fruitbot? Scribd originally hosted the competition years ago, but it's on its own site now: http://fruitbots.org

It's fun and easy to download a Randombot to modify, even if you don't upload it to the public competition. It might just be a good place to try a new language, like Lua or Ruby.

Re: Games of Coding – A curated list of games that teach you a programming language

#23
post #7

Can't recomend enough Human Resource Machine! by World of Goo creator http://2dboy.com/ it's Android/iOS game teaching some basic programing concepts. Fun and good looking.

Thank you for the recommendation, looks great indeed. Can't wait to try with my kids :-)

Re: Games of Coding – A curated list of games that teach you a programming language

#24
post #18
post #7

Can't recomend enough Human Resource Machine! by World of Goo creator http://2dboy.com/ it's Android/iOS game teaching some basic programing concepts. Fun and good looking.

Also on Windows, macOS and Wii U.

Linux too.

Re: Games of Coding – A curated list of games that teach you a programming language

#26
I just picked up WarioWare DIY for my Nintendo (3)DS. It's got a pretty rudimentary rules engine to script the microgames, but some of the tricks you can pull using some clever triggers and stage setup reminded me of the best programming puzzles.

In my mind, it's the closest we'll get to a mainstream Piet programming environment :)

Re: Games of Coding – A curated list of games that teach you a programming language

#28
post #17

I'm not sure if such games can help to learn programming. For example, Robocode is very dynamics-based and requires knowledge of control theory (which involves partial differential equations) and decision making under uncertainty. I'm doing software development for almost 10 years and yet such games are too hard for me. These games can help you to learn "AI" but not programming. It's simpler to create your own Roboco…

I don't know about that one but I've recently become pretty active the in the Screeps community (https://screeps.com/) and many of the players are first-time JavaScript programmers. In fact, one of the players in the top 20 for the game told me he had only been programming for ~40 hours before starting the game.

Control systems are very important in the game (the high-level is almost as much a logistics game as it is a tactics game), but you don't get to think about those until you can successfully walk your units around and complete basic tasks.

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