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The Unix Pipe Card Game

punkx.org

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Re: The Unix Pipe Card Game

#31

Post by jackdoe »

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…

> But I am having a hard time imagining it's the best way to learn to pipe together commands.

To be honest, it is very strange how hard it is to teach programming concepts, for some reason almost all humans use computers but only 0.1% or so can program them.

I am not sure we have the 'best way' to teach anything computer related.

People develop world model for physics quite early, they know they can pull with a rope but cant push with a rope.

And they get intuition, things that are thrown up, go down, and they can transfer this intuition in the math, because math is real.

For some reason its hard to do that with code. People keep trying to push with a rope, even after studying for many years.

PS: I am trying to teach her neural networks now and am working on this RNN board game https://punkx.org/projekt0/book/part2/rnn.html to fight the "square" dragon. I want her to develop good world model for neural networks, so that she understands what chatgpt is. I just keep experimenting, sometimes things click, sometimes not.

Re: The Unix Pipe Card Game

#32

Post by williamcotton »

dhosek wrote: post #21
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…

I’m wondering whether it could be played with a Unix box connected to the big TV in the living room so that with each command added to the pipe you can see the result. That’s my instinct for what to do with this, although it does feel like it is a play once kind of game.

Would this be something along those lines?

https://github.com/williamcotton/guish

It's a GUI for constructing and executing Unix pipelines and it shows the output of each step in the pipeline.

Re: The Unix Pipe Card Game

#33

Post by jackdoe »

j2kun wrote: post #19

I saw that huge box of decks they printed for this, and I though, oh dear, how are they going to sell that many copies? :(

:) I actually printed a lot so the price is cheap, and I could sell for 5$ then I sold them until I recoup the printing cost and donated the rest to schools.

I am thinking of doing a reprint, but tbh shipping is so expensive now, and I there is also USA's tariffs and etc.

Re: The Unix Pipe Card Game

#34

Post by JamesTRexx »

nomadygnt wrote: post #14
d-us-vb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

Trial and error was the root of what became my IT career. I became curious about what each executable did from DOS and with that did my first tweaking of autoexec.bat and config.sys to maximise memory. Years later I was the only one who could investigate network (and some other) problems in Windows via the command line while I was the junior of the team. Ended up being the driver of several new ways of working for the department and company.

Re: The Unix Pipe Card Game

#35

Post by bc569a80a344f9c »

jackdoe wrote: post #31
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…

> But I am having a hard time imagining it's the best way to learn to pipe together commands. To be honest, it is very strange how hard it is to teach programming concepts, for some reason almost all humans use computers but only 0.1% or so can program them. I am not sure we have the 'best way' to teach anything computer related. People develop world model for physics quite early, they know they can pull with a rope…

> almost all humans use computers but only 0.1% or so can program them.

This is nitpicking but I was curious: there are 4.4 million software developers in the US (https://www.griddynamics.com/blog/number-software-developers...). The population is 340 million, 0.1% would be 340,000. You’re off by over one order of magnitude.

Re: The Unix Pipe Card Game

#36

Post by derrida »

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…

hey, I just copy and pasted your comment into an agent I hope you don't mind.

one shot result:

https://wonderful.exe.xyz

you could do the same, or I could give you access to this one if you want.

Re: The Unix Pipe Card Game

#38

Post by cheesecakegood »

nomadygnt wrote: post #14
d-us-vb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

Needs qualification. Research shows trial and error learning is very durable, but it’s not the most time efficient (in fact it’s relatively poor, usually, on that front). The two concepts are a bit different. Yes, trial and error engages more of the brain and provides a degree of difficulty that can sometimes be helpful in making the concepts sticky, but well designed teaching coupled with meaningful and appropriately difficult retrieval and practice is better on most axes. When possible… good teaching often needs refinement. And you’d be surprised how many educators know very little about the neuroscience of learning!

Re: The Unix Pipe Card Game

#39

Post by Contax »

Love this. I once (2017 I think) made a card game based around MS-DOS with elements of Crazy Eights which I called Crazy DOS (shortened C:DOS) but got zero attention so I moved on. I might try this one, I love this kind of stuff.

Re: The Unix Pipe Card Game

#40

Post by zahlman »

cheesecakegood wrote: post #38
nomadygnt wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

Needs qualification. Research shows trial and error learning is very durable, but it’s not the most time efficient (in fact it’s relatively poor, usually, on that front). The two concepts are a bit different. Yes, trial and error engages more of the brain and provides a degree of difficulty that can sometimes be helpful in making the concepts sticky, but well designed teaching coupled with meaningful and appropriatel…

> And you’d be surprised how many educators know very little about the neuroscience of learning!

I'm (pleasantly) surprised every time I see evidence of one of them knowing anything about it.

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