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Games Teaching the Basics of Programming
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Sep 21, 2005 04:44 PM
from the hooked-on-programming-worked-for-me dept.
from the hooked-on-programming-worked-for-me dept.
RandomPrecision writes to tell us Wired is reporting that computer programmer Igor Kholodov has created a game designed to make learning the basics of programming fun. From the article 'The board game turns players into skiers who must race down a mountain in the quickest way possible. With each roll of the die, players must follow instructions that are similar to computer program codes. Using basic math, players have to figure out which paths are open to them and then decide the fastest way to the finish line.'"
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Repetitive Learning Pays Off (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Repetitive Learning Pays Off (Score:2)
"C-Jump STILL considered harmful."
Re:Repetitive Learning Pays Off (Score:5, Interesting)
Consider for a moment: How does the processor execute a branching statement? The answer is simple, it jumps to a new line! Just because the "line number" happens to be a memory address instead of a program line number doesn't make it any less of a GOTO. So if the machine operates that way to begin with, why should we shield programmers from the design?
IMHO, anyone who can't overcome a reliance on GOTO simply isn't programmer material to begin with.
Parent
Re:Repetitive Learning Pays Off (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Repetitive Learning Pays Off (Score:3, Funny)
Having just read the essay itself for the first time, I can say Dijkstra's writing style has done far more harm to my head than goto ever could.
Admittedly, his English is probably better than my Dutch. Largely because I don't speak Dutch.
Re:Repetitive Learning Pays Off (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Repetitive Learning Pays Off (Score:3, Informative)
His paper makes the inference that you know what a GOTO is and what it does, and explains why
Re:P.S. it was actually BASIC. . . (Score:3, Funny)
New game teaches duping! (Score:2, Redundant)
Kholodov : Let's Play Programmer (Score:2)
Kholodov lives in Braintree, Massachusetts
neat! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:neat! (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:neat! (Score:2, Interesting)
Educational games... (Score:3, Interesting)
I learnt everything I know from Quake 3 Arena (Score:2)
Yeah its just you.
Deja Vu? (Score:3, Funny)
Yesterdays story on this exact same subject [slashdot.org].
Dupe & More (Score:5, Informative)
2. New programmers may find Robocode [ai-depot.com] more interesting. It allows players to actually program instead of just "learning about it".
Re:Dupe & More (Score:3, Interesting)
ARGGGHHHH!! (Score:5, Funny)
Deja-Slashdot (Score:2, Insightful)
-Digital Madman
my algorithm for C-Jump (Score:5, Insightful)
{ game_over(); }
Anyone else remember (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Anyone else remember (Score:2)
Not only is it a dupe, its a Dumb story (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not only is it a dupe, its a Dumb story (Score:2)
What?! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What?! (Score:2)
Optionally, you could just take hostages.
There's a workaround for almost everything...
Here's Another Learning Game (Score:5, Funny)
Take a normal pack of playing cards (remove Jokers), and start dealing out cards. Now, look at the face of the card (ie, Ace, 4, 5, King, etc.). If you've already dealt out a card with the same face value, place the card in the "dupe" pile. If you haven't, you can place it in the "post" pile.
At the end of the game, count your post pile. If you do not have 13 cards in your "post" pile, you lose.
This game is designed to teach you if you've already seen something and therefore don't need to post it again.
Sound familiar? (Score:2)
Isn't programming itself fun? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe it's just me, but I've always thought the "let's make learning fun!" approach to education is absurd and ultimately ineffective.
If a person finds the subject matter uninteresting, what is the point in dressing it up as something else? If you have to fool someone into being interested by dressing it up as something else, then they aren't really interested in it, period. Let them learn about something else.
Besides, you don't make learning fun by dressing it up as something else, because the learning itself *is* the fun part. Instead of trying to dress up programming by constructing some absurd artificial problem to solve or game to play, show people how the learned knowledge can be applied in useful ways to real problems to yield impressive results.
Re:Isn't programming itself fun? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, programming can be fun in real situations, but for someone just starting out, playing games is a great idea to get them to notice how fun programming can be.
This is why.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Go on, mod me as troll or redundant, but the continuous dupes are getting way beyond the amusement factor they used to have.
Re:This is why.... (Score:3, Funny)
No simple way (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No simple way (Score:3, Funny)
For fucks sake... (Score:2, Funny)
You've managed to build up a huge userbase*, develop a fairly sophisticated posting/moderation system - and then waste the whole fucking lot with retard editors who don't edit, quite plainly don't even read their own site, with less-than-24hrs-apart dupes on a weekly basis, broken links, things that snopes has debunked long ago, etc, etc.
And that's just the "obviously bad" editorial fuckups. Don't even get me started on how the 'quirky science' and 'cool tech'
this may be wildly off topic, but I wish (Score:5, Funny)
Re:this may be wildly off topic, but I wish (Score:3, Funny)
This is not a dupe! (Score:2)
Sorry (Score:3, Insightful)
I didn't think it would make it through the sieve, but it did. Again - sorry, everyone.
*awaits flames*
ava! (Score:2)
Two-for-one deal! (Score:5, Funny)
We all (well, mostly all) know Cmdr. Wil Riker was duplicated by a freak, one-chance-in-a-billion transporter accident that spawned Thomas Riker, but geez this shit's getting outa hand. Now, if the OLD Enterprise crew could merge the Good Jim Kirk back with the Evil Jim Kirk through the transporter, then maybe -- just maybe -- Cmdr. Taco could fiddle with the packet-transporters to merge ScuttleMonkey and Zonk back into a cohesive whole?
More to the point, when (ok, if) this does happen, hopefully their good/evil duplicate articles will merge back into single entities as well.
Of course, this would mean all the posts between the respective dupes would slam together into a single entity of posts, creating a massive disturbance between their respective mirror universes and...
Aw fuck, what was I sayin'...?
Re:Two-for-one deal! (Score:3, Funny)
Of course, this would mean all the posts between the respective dupes would slam together into a single entity of posts...
'Cause, boy oh boy, we sure need to make sure we keep all these insightful posts everyone made under this version of the story...
Again? (Score:2)
Too bad... (Score:3, Insightful)
How about a game to teach.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:DUPE (Score:2)
Re:DUPE (Score:2)
Re:DUPE (Score:2)
I'm convinced people are intentionally submitted Dupes, and large sums of money change hands whenever the editors DON'T put the dupe on the front page.
I just lost $25k USD on this one. I would have thought a lame story that didn't get comments yesterday would have almost no chance of being posted again.
Re:Yes, it's a dupe! (Score:2, Funny)