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My son (9 yrs old) used plain JavaScript to make a game, and wants your feedback

armaansahni.com

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Re: My son (9 yrs old) used plain JavaScript to make a game, and wants your feedback

#421

Post by Aeolun »

JoelMcCracken wrote: post #373

I'm sure you've gotten a lot of good feedback, but a personal message for your kid: I am well into my adulthood, but I started programming from a similar place way back when. I was probably 12-13 when I was self-studying HTML/CSS/JavaScript. Today the web tech stack is way more complicated than it was when I was a kid, but its also way more capable. You can do so much with it now that was a dream - I was into pokemon…

> I was into pokemon as a kid and wanted to make a "fan site", which is what got me learning (just to date how far back this was)!

This cannot be used to date you. Kids these days (and presumably anywhere in between) are still into pokemon. Just today it’s Koraidon and Miraidon.

Re: My son (9 yrs old) used plain JavaScript to make a game, and wants your feedback

#422

Post by veesahni »

dakeemc34 wrote: post #413

It's funny because 2 weeks back I showed this game to our robotics team consisting of 5th graders as inspiration for their project and they built a web app to spread awareness about plastic pollution of oceans. Here's is what they came up with help of perplexity.ai and your game: https://pikabotz55488.github.io/pikabotz/ It is more as a quiz than a game at the moment but I asked them to use prodigy and your son's gam…

oh thats cool! I'm sure he'll be so excited to learn his game was used as a reference :)

Re: My son (9 yrs old) used plain JavaScript to make a game, and wants your feedback

#423

Post by veesahni »

Joaomcabrita wrote: post #410

Congrats! Pretty cool. And using AI is pretty awesome too. Make sure he doesn't skip the proper Software Engineering stuff too though, get his algorithms and architecture patterns right.

All in good time!

Re: My son (9 yrs old) used plain JavaScript to make a game, and wants your feedback

#424

Post by veesahni »

cjohnson318 wrote: post #414
veesahni wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids dad here. I was not expecting animations for v1 either! But one day he asked me what the extra buttons were in Piskel and I explained frames + layers. His eyes lit up and the flying snake was born an hour later. Originally with 4 frames, but mom gave him feedback that he needs more frames for it to be smooth. Thus I believe it is currently 8 frames! And we have talked in depth about how not to use AI. He has a h…

Dude, flying snake is my favorite. I've had a pretty bad week, and this really made my day. I miss the weird internet, with sprites and CMYK bright green. Great job.

I'm glad it brightened your day!! Appreciate the comments!

Re: My son (9 yrs old) used plain JavaScript to make a game, and wants your feedback

#425

Post by redundantly »

Aeolun wrote: post #421
JoelMcCracken wrote: post #373

I'm sure you've gotten a lot of good feedback, but a personal message for your kid: I am well into my adulthood, but I started programming from a similar place way back when. I was probably 12-13 when I was self-studying HTML/CSS/JavaScript. Today the web tech stack is way more complicated than it was when I was a kid, but its also way more capable. You can do so much with it now that was a dream - I was into pokemon…

> I was into pokemon as a kid and wanted to make a "fan site", which is what got me learning (just to date how far back this was)! This cannot be used to date you. Kids these days (and presumably anywhere in between) are still into pokemon. Just today it’s Koraidon and Miraidon.

It isn't the interest in Pokémon that dates them, it's wanting to make a webpage for it. :)

Re: My son (9 yrs old) used plain JavaScript to make a game, and wants your feedback

#427

Post by zahlman »

deathanatos wrote: post #161
veesahni wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today, you could paste that into an LLM and it would immediately identify the issue. The next generation of developers have so much power at their fingertips.

I was young at the time, but when I TA'd, the lesson I'd try to impart here is to take the time to learn the lexicon of the compiler error, and understand what it is trying to tell you. Then it's not just "code broke yo" but "is here is what is wrong." Much better to learn to have a conversation with a deterministic compiler than an LLM that'll just cook up some random junk when it gets backed into a corner.

I feel like after all these decades of research and implementation, compilers (and runtimes) ought to be better at directly explaining what's wrong.

Python has made some significant strides in this area recently, but in my mind it's nowhere near enough.

Re: My son (9 yrs old) used plain JavaScript to make a game, and wants your feedback

#428

Post by owenpalmer »

From the blog post:

> But there was one downside to AI. AI was like a human which is why you could talk to it like a human. But because it was like a human, it could also be wrong like a human.

This is very insightful for a 9 year old! It's so cool to see a child encountering these new technologies and building an intuition for them.

It makes me so happy to see kids learning to make games. I was 9 years old was when I started, except I used the Blender Game Engine (RIP). I have very fond memories of those long hours at the computer.

Re: My son (9 yrs old) used plain JavaScript to make a game, and wants your feedback

#429

Post by jedberg »

JoelMcCracken wrote: post #373

I'm sure you've gotten a lot of good feedback, but a personal message for your kid: I am well into my adulthood, but I started programming from a similar place way back when. I was probably 12-13 when I was self-studying HTML/CSS/JavaScript. Today the web tech stack is way more complicated than it was when I was a kid, but its also way more capable. You can do so much with it now that was a dream - I was into pokemon…

> I was into pokemon as a kid and wanted to make a "fan site", which is what got me learning (just to date how far back this was)!

If you look at the other pages on OP's website, they too are a Pokemon fan. :)

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