Live data from Hacker News

The Unix Pipe Card Game

punkx.org

1–10 of 46 posts

Re: The Unix Pipe Card Game

#3
I make those decks (https://punkx.org/) to help me teach my daughter, and so far they seem very effective, especially the unix pipes one and the 4917 machine code https://punkx.org/4917/ and the pointers deck https://punkx.org/c-pointer-game/ , from the python deck I use only 10 cards or so

btw, you might also like https://punkx.org/overflow/ which is a buffer overflow riscv assembly board game, or depending on your kid's level you can also play snakes and ladders with gotos https://punkx.org/overflow/build/snakes-and-ladders.pdf

Also if you have kids, I would recommend you print https://punkx.org/panic/ which has amazing pranks that fit in one poker card (e.g. randomly hitting backspace or space every 30 seconds, or pressing W randomly if minecraft is open)

I am donating a lot of the decks to teachers and schools, so if you are interested send me an email.

PS: I am in London for 1 more week, so if you order decks now the shipping will be delayed, but I will make sure I add 1-2 extra decks in the package because of it.

PPS: the unix pipes expansion deck is all about process substitution, but I don't think its useful for kids, though I think it contains nice puzzles

Re: The Unix Pipe Card Game

#5
post #4

$19 shipping (Canada) is a little outrageous anybody in Greater Vancouver wanna do a bulk order w me?

Sorry :( I use PostNL, and its actually even more expensive, on most non EU shipping I lose

but each deck has pdfs you can just print them with your local printing shop, if you don't print the box it should be cheaper

you can also just print them on a4 paper and cut it with scissors, its not the end of the world, it is even helpful to explain to someone with pen and paper as well.

in this case: https://punkx.org/unix-pipe-game/unix-pipe-box.pdf this is the box and https://punkx.org/unix-pipe-game/unix-pipe-cards.pdf are the cards

Re: The Unix Pipe Card Game

#6
Are kids these days actually able to grasp things like this? I don't have kids and am never around them, so please take this question as genuine and in good faith.

Re: The Unix Pipe Card Game

#7

I make those decks ( https://punkx.org/ ) to help me teach my daughter, and so far they seem very effective, especially the unix pipes one and the 4917 machine code https://punkx.org/4917/ and the pointers deck https://punkx.org/c-pointer-game/ , from the python deck I use only 10 cards or so btw, you might also like https://punkx.org/overflow/ which is a buffer overflow riscv assembly board game, or depending on you…

So cool! I'm ordering a few of these after rework tonight.

Out of curiosity, how do you handle printing? DIY? POD? Order in bulk and ship yourself? I'm always so interested in how people handle physical product sales at a small scale.

Re: The Unix Pipe Card Game

#8
post #6

Are kids these days actually able to grasp things like this? I don't have kids and am never around them, so please take this question as genuine and in good faith.

I think it depends a lot on the kid and the parent, I am teaching my daughter since she was 10, and I try to spend time every day doing something, you can see our progress here: https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids/blob/master/...

It is difficult because I have to compete with snapchat and google/meta for her attention, and school is quite exhausting. Snapchat has this super annoying 'streaks' and the more friends you have the more streaks you have to keep alive, so you have to send like 400 messages per day.. its non stop. I teach her that there are 100_000 developers and psychologists and product owners and etc, that they go to work every single day thinking how to extract the most value out of her attention, and she has to constantly be aware of what is the "algorithm" making her do.

Unix Pipes she got quite quickly, but doesn't use often, but the idea of one program reading another program's output she got. Also grasping the command line was not that difficult. But I used quite some tricks to help. For example her windows PC I change the shell from explorer to cmd.exe, so it boots in cmd, so she has to navigate and also fix it. I also make scavenger hunts on her filesystem so she has to look for a file using dir and cd and etc, also https://overthewire.org/wargames/bandit/ I bribed her with robux for passing each level of the bandit game

I want to teach her how computers work and how to make them do what she wants. From what is a register, to an instruction, to a program to a process. Kihon no Kihon as they say. But in the process I also teach her how to break things down and how to think and most importantly how to learn. I teach her about the heart of things, so there is no mystery between the keyboard press and the letter appearing on the screen, or how chatgpt predicts the next word (I am working on a RNN board game with 3 neurons and you have to teach it to count https://punkx.org/move-37/rnn.pdf [work in progress])

So in the end I am not sure if it matters what you teach your children :)

Re: The Unix Pipe Card Game

#9
post #7

I make those decks ( https://punkx.org/ ) to help me teach my daughter, and so far they seem very effective, especially the unix pipes one and the 4917 machine code https://punkx.org/4917/ and the pointers deck https://punkx.org/c-pointer-game/ , from the python deck I use only 10 cards or so btw, you might also like https://punkx.org/overflow/ which is a buffer overflow riscv assembly board game, or depending on you…

So cool! I'm ordering a few of these after rework tonight. Out of curiosity, how do you handle printing? DIY? POD? Order in bulk and ship yourself? I'm always so interested in how people handle physical product sales at a small scale.

I print with local print shop http://www.hrspeelkaarten.nl/ and https://www.printenbind.nl/ and I print a lot so the price gets to 3-4$ (like 800 decks or so) and then I ship myself.

TBH physical products are amazing, I want to make more. Its such an amazing feeling once the product is "done", you can just start working on the next one, in contrast with software which is always in your head..

Re: The Unix Pipe Card Game

#10

I make those decks ( https://punkx.org/ ) to help me teach my daughter, and so far they seem very effective, especially the unix pipes one and the 4917 machine code https://punkx.org/4917/ and the pointers deck https://punkx.org/c-pointer-game/ , from the python deck I use only 10 cards or so btw, you might also like https://punkx.org/overflow/ which is a buffer overflow riscv assembly board game, or depending on you…

There was also a Show HN thread a couple of years ago, for people who are into the whole reading old comments thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33222687
Post reply on HN