8 ms·

Kids can now learn to code with Pocky, the delicious Japanese snack

87 points by legodt 10y ago

michaelbuddy 10y ago
Maybe Snapple or Dove Chocolates could add some programming related knowledge under their labels / caps. That'd be kind of fun and apparently you get an easy press release out of it.
- NegativeLatency 10y ago
  From reading the article it sounds like Pocky did something much more interesting than that. They are doing object recognition to use the candy as symbols in a programming language. Sounds a bit different from what you suggest.
  - DonHopkins 10y ago
    An edible programming language would be a great promotion for the international roll-out of the new Unicode version of Post Alpha-Bits Cereal. They could base it on PostScript, so it had nice graphics.
bemmu 10y ago
I just went to the supermarket here in Japan to hunt down some of these Pocky. At least the ones they had did not promote this, so they are using the candy programming app as a promotion to get people to buy the candies, but the candies in store are not promoting programming.
- michaelbuddy 10y ago
  as popular Pocky is in Japan, Japan isn't going to go through inventory everywhere as fast as a lot of countries eat sweet snacks. They actually eat sensibly there. Expect the stock to replenish at slower pace.
  - marak830 10y ago
    Not sure why you are being down voted, I see a lot lower amount of people eating food like that here compared to Australia. I am going to look for one of these packs though :-)
na85 10y ago
I'm not sure that a brand of chocolate-covered carbohydrates sponsoring sedentary behavior like coding is something that should be celebrated. Hours spent coding should be followed or broken up by physical activity, not sugary treats.
- awqrre 10y ago
  Something like Pokemon Go but for coding would be nice.
  - DonHopkins 10y ago
    You have to walk to single step the program counter, and run to execute your code at full speed. Then you can catch your breath at breakpoints. That would be a lot healthier than a high fructose visual programming language like Pocky.
- sithadmin 10y ago
  >Hours spent coding should be followed or broken up by physical activity, not sugary treats. Yeah, we should force kids to go run laps around the block every time they complete a few dozen lines, or master a new concept. That'll motivate them to learn!
  - na85 10y ago
    Downvoting because we disagree, are we? Instead of being caustic why don't you actually rebut my point? We could/should do more to encourage kids to lead a healthy lifestyle and to balance hours sitting at the computer with sports or working out instead of eating unhealthy junk food. Do you really think a company would run this campaign if they didn't think it would result in more kids buying pockys?
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      Please calm dawn. Also, why do you assume 'sithadmin downvoted you? Do you have proof? Last time I checked, HN didn't give away the names of downvoters to downvotees. > Do you really think a company would run this campaign if they didn't think it would result in more kids buying pockys? Well of course they run it to increase sales. That's a problem with advertising in general, not with this particular company or campaign idea. Or am I misunderstanding your criticism here?
DonHopkins 10y ago
The Japanese are raising a generation of kids who will dominate the international code eating competitions.
raimondious 10y ago
It looks like this translates Pocky in different positions to lines of code and then executes that code. This is too many levels of abstraction even for me to make sense of as a professional programmer... I like where their heart is but I think this would be a terrible introduction to coding.
- brink 10y ago
  Looks to me like an opportunity for a TV show spinoff - "Are you smarter than a 5th grader eating snacks with a smartphone?"
- Karlozkiller 10y ago
  There are many similar programs/games, where you program through icons instead. There is some science behind suggesting there is some transfer to real world programming from that. As far as I recall, children can learn "Computational Thinking" without having to concentrate on the often heavy syntax of programming. I agree with you that setting up candy on a table, to take a photo of it and then getting some game-character to move accordingly, sounds a bit far fetched and might not give enough to actually learn programming. But it could definitely work to some extent, and if nothing else it sounds like a great markething scheme.
danthejam 10y ago
But then they'll eat the snacks and be unable to play. What if you use similarly shaped objects like pens and erasers?
- icebraining 10y ago
  They'll just have to buy more Pockys! Reminds me of Calvin eating boxes and boxes of "Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs" to get the flying beanie: https://chrisstich.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/ca4.gif https://chrisstich.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/ca4.gif
spike021 10y ago
I just bought four special imported flavors the other day and I don't feel guilty at all for it. Pocky is great. This sounds pretty cool though.
richmarr 10y ago
But does it compile to Javscript?
antirez 10y ago
It looks like a bad idea to bind the concept of having fun programming with eating sweets.
Animats 10y ago
Pocky has been expanding into the US. It used to only be available in Nijiya Markets, at a big markup over the price in Japan. Now it's in US movie theaters. Maybe we'll get Calorie Mate food blocks next. Programming with Calorie Mate could become a thing. The "lay out a pattern with physical objects, take a picture, analyze, and build program" approach is interesting. Like most forms of visual programming, it won't scale, but it's cute. Now someone into Minecraft should build something where you build with Legos, take a picture, and import into Minecraft.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  > It used to only be available in Nijiya Markets I'm going to anal-retentively nitpick you and proclaim that Pocky was available in places like Yaohan (now defunct) [1] before Nijiya [2] even existed. ;) [1] First US store in 1979 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaohan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaohan [2] First store in 1986 http://www.nijiya.com/about-us http://www.nijiya.com/about-us
  - twblalock 10y ago
    In California, it's been sold by the big grocery store chains for years.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
  I've never been to a Nijiya Market but I first saw Pocky in the US in about 2001.
- quadrangle 10y ago
  I don't know what Nijiya Markets are, but I had pocky here in the U.s. back in the 1980s. Yes, it was from an Asian grocery store.
- cableshaft 10y ago
  If you could do that with the actual Minecraft legos (or just legos in general, but the minecraft legos are the write size and shape already), that would be killer. Probably have to take an angled sideview and a top view, at least. But yeah, would be very cool.
ChrisArchitect 10y ago
damnit https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12234079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12234079
Cyph0n 10y ago
Pocky is available in most supermarkets in the UAE. It's an amazing snack food to be frank. Great to see it on HN!
greggman 10y ago
Just please don't call it paw-key. It's poe-key (rhymes with low-key) although in truth there's a gap between poe & key https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s3gIrqQhwkM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s3gIrqQhwkM And yes I know someone is going to complain it's not English. So what. Neither is the pronounciation of pizza. If you can bother to say pee-tsa instead of piz-ah you can bother to say poe-key instead of paw-key
- q1t 10y ago
  What about pronunciation?)
- ocb 10y ago
  To be that nitpicky asshole, "pizza" as an example doesn't really do anything to argue your case because there's plenty of non-English-language brands that Americans typically pronounce with an English pronunciation (Volkswagen, IKEA, Nutella, etc.)
- dwc 10y ago
  Just say ポッキー and you'll say it right every time.
- beachstartup 10y ago
  i'm going to keep saying pawkey.
- yladiz 10y ago
  It doesn't matter if people understand you. It's fine if you want to say it like it's said in Japanese, but don't be pedantic and make others feel bad for saying it a specific way.
- mwfunk 10y ago
  Do you correctly pronounce "Nikon" as "Nee con", then explain to your English-speaking friends that that's how it's pronounced in Japan even though Nikon marketing doesn't even use that pronunciation in English-speaking countries? Do you correctly pronounce "champagne" the French way around your English-speaking friends, even though the French pronunciation sounds almost nothing like "sham pain" so of course you have to explain yourself every single time you say the word? Does actual phlegm emerge from your throat whenever you correctly pronounce the Greek letter chi at the end of TeX and LaTeX, or do you just say "lay tech" or (god forbid) "lay techs"? Most importantly, do you say "guh noo slash lin ucks" and go around correcting everyone who doesn't? Because if you do any of these things, please, please, please stop. Please. Please. Seriously, it is so not worth it.
groceryheist 10y ago
It's like mit scratch. Except the underlying purpose is to sell junk food, the only sprite you can control is a corporate mascot, and you do so alone instead of in a social platform. The focus on problem solving may be good for helping kids learn and practice solving problems procedurally. The free form nature of scratch gives a lot of freedom for goofing off, which can be a good thing. http://scratch.mit.edu http://scratch.mit.edu
- keerthiko 10y ago
  While you didn't say so explicitly, you sound disparaging of this initiative in favour of Scratch being better in every way. Scratch is great and noble and better in every way as an isolated programming learning tool, but it's worth noting the reach and marketability of Pocky to get kids interested in the whole scene. You (parents, kids, non-CS-oriented teachers and mentors) aren't going to find and use Scratch without the prime directive of "I want a kid-friendly programming learning tool". But now you can get the kids Pocky, which you may have gotten anyway since no kid is going to complain about that, and they can learn something meaningful and cool with a character that has context they know and appreciate, unlike scratch's characters that exist in their bubble. Actually being able to impact a much larger audience even with a less ideal experience, is net worth much more than a stellar tool that cannot break past a high activation barrier and caters to a very tiny audience. Like Settlers of Catan for introducing people to board games outside Monopoly, and IFLS (I Fucking Love Science) for getting people interested in space, biology, etc. These seem like perverted contractions of beautiful things, but at the end of the day they get more people interested and that's a good thing. I for one remember countless mornings reading and learning the backs of the cereal boxes as I had breakfast getting ready for school, and those mornings would have been so much more productive building Pocky programs, but there was no way I was going to fire up Scratch and create programs there.
nether 10y ago
Kids should be outside playing and interacting with other kids, not coding and gobbling candy.
- jameslk 10y ago
  I was one of those kids who stayed glued to a computer indoors and had all my friends online. Now I have a career and friends across the globe to thank for it. Not every person should follow a prescribed path.
  - overcast 10y ago
    How often do you socially interact with those global friends, in person? I'm all for learning awesome computer skills, but there is a time to be a child, and a time to be an adult. I wouldn't exchange growing up in the woods with BMX bikes, skateboards, and vine swings with the neighborhood kids. For sitting behind a computer all summer vacation, messaging people on the internet. I now have a career, and friends all over the world as well.
    - jameslk 10y ago
      In person? That's difficult for me since I'm not often able to travel to Finland, the UK, Egypt, etc. I interact with my online friends nearly daily, online. My point was that I would of never have met such diverse people early on had I not grown up around a computer + Internet. Nor would I have necessarily been able to get a job programming right out of high school that helped pay for my college education. I'm not claiming my path was superior in any way, only that there's more than one way through life.
      - overcast 10y ago
        Of course you would have, just like the rest of us have friends all over the world now. I respect your decisions, and I'm glad you're doing well however I'm not going to agree spending your youth indoors was a good choice. There is no argument for what this type of lifestyle is doing to this current generation. They are basically incapable of socially interacting and dating.
zump 10y ago
Kids learning to code will save the world.

87 points by legodt 10y ago

Maybe Snapple or Dove Chocolates could add some programming related knowledge under their labels / caps. That'd be kind of fun and apparently you get an easy press release out of it.

NegativeLatency 10y ago
From reading the article it sounds like Pocky did something much more interesting than that. They are doing object recognition to use the candy as symbols in a programming language. Sounds a bit different from what you suggest.
- DonHopkins 10y ago
  An edible programming language would be a great promotion for the international roll-out of the new Unicode version of Post Alpha-Bits Cereal. They could base it on PostScript, so it had nice graphics.

bemmu 10y ago

I just went to the supermarket here in Japan to hunt down some of these Pocky. At least the ones they had did not promote this, so they are using the candy programming app as a promotion to get people to buy the candies, but the candies in store are not promoting programming.

michaelbuddy 10y ago
as popular Pocky is in Japan, Japan isn't going to go through inventory everywhere as fast as a lot of countries eat sweet snacks. They actually eat sensibly there. Expect the stock to replenish at slower pace.
- marak830 10y ago
  Not sure why you are being down voted, I see a lot lower amount of people eating food like that here compared to Australia. I am going to look for one of these packs though :-)

na85 10y ago

I'm not sure that a brand of chocolate-covered carbohydrates sponsoring sedentary behavior like coding is something that should be celebrated. Hours spent coding should be followed or broken up by physical activity, not sugary treats.

awqrre 10y ago
Something like Pokemon Go but for coding would be nice.
- DonHopkins 10y ago
  You have to walk to single step the program counter, and run to execute your code at full speed. Then you can catch your breath at breakpoints. That would be a lot healthier than a high fructose visual programming language like Pocky.
sithadmin 10y ago
>Hours spent coding should be followed or broken up by physical activity, not sugary treats. Yeah, we should force kids to go run laps around the block every time they complete a few dozen lines, or master a new concept. That'll motivate them to learn!
- na85 10y ago
  Downvoting because we disagree, are we? Instead of being caustic why don't you actually rebut my point? We could/should do more to encourage kids to lead a healthy lifestyle and to balance hours sitting at the computer with sports or working out instead of eating unhealthy junk food. Do you really think a company would run this campaign if they didn't think it would result in more kids buying pockys?
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Please calm dawn. Also, why do you assume 'sithadmin downvoted you? Do you have proof? Last time I checked, HN didn't give away the names of downvoters to downvotees. > Do you really think a company would run this campaign if they didn't think it would result in more kids buying pockys? Well of course they run it to increase sales. That's a problem with advertising in general, not with this particular company or campaign idea. Or am I misunderstanding your criticism here?

DonHopkins 10y ago

The Japanese are raising a generation of kids who will dominate the international code eating competitions.

raimondious 10y ago

It looks like this translates Pocky in different positions to lines of code and then executes that code. This is too many levels of abstraction even for me to make sense of as a professional programmer... I like where their heart is but I think this would be a terrible introduction to coding.

brink 10y ago
Looks to me like an opportunity for a TV show spinoff - "Are you smarter than a 5th grader eating snacks with a smartphone?"
Karlozkiller 10y ago
There are many similar programs/games, where you program through icons instead. There is some science behind suggesting there is some transfer to real world programming from that. As far as I recall, children can learn "Computational Thinking" without having to concentrate on the often heavy syntax of programming. I agree with you that setting up candy on a table, to take a photo of it and then getting some game-character to move accordingly, sounds a bit far fetched and might not give enough to actually learn programming. But it could definitely work to some extent, and if nothing else it sounds like a great markething scheme.

danthejam 10y ago

But then they'll eat the snacks and be unable to play. What if you use similarly shaped objects like pens and erasers?

icebraining 10y ago
They'll just have to buy more Pockys! Reminds me of Calvin eating boxes and boxes of "Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs" to get the flying beanie: https://chrisstich.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/ca4.gif https://chrisstich.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/ca4.gif

spike021 10y ago

I just bought four special imported flavors the other day and I don't feel guilty at all for it. Pocky is great. This sounds pretty cool though.

richmarr 10y ago

But does it compile to Javscript?

antirez 10y ago

It looks like a bad idea to bind the concept of having fun programming with eating sweets.

Animats 10y ago

Pocky has been expanding into the US. It used to only be available in Nijiya Markets, at a big markup over the price in Japan. Now it's in US movie theaters. Maybe we'll get Calorie Mate food blocks next. Programming with Calorie Mate could become a thing. The "lay out a pattern with physical objects, take a picture, analyze, and build program" approach is interesting. Like most forms of visual programming, it won't scale, but it's cute. Now someone into Minecraft should build something where you build with Legos, take a picture, and import into Minecraft.

hkmurakami 10y ago
> It used to only be available in Nijiya Markets I'm going to anal-retentively nitpick you and proclaim that Pocky was available in places like Yaohan (now defunct) [1] before Nijiya [2] even existed. ;) [1] First US store in 1979 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaohan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaohan [2] First store in 1986 http://www.nijiya.com/about-us http://www.nijiya.com/about-us
- twblalock 10y ago
  In California, it's been sold by the big grocery store chains for years.
GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
I've never been to a Nijiya Market but I first saw Pocky in the US in about 2001.
quadrangle 10y ago
I don't know what Nijiya Markets are, but I had pocky here in the U.s. back in the 1980s. Yes, it was from an Asian grocery store.
cableshaft 10y ago
If you could do that with the actual Minecraft legos (or just legos in general, but the minecraft legos are the write size and shape already), that would be killer. Probably have to take an angled sideview and a top view, at least. But yeah, would be very cool.

ChrisArchitect 10y ago

damnit https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12234079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12234079

Cyph0n 10y ago

Pocky is available in most supermarkets in the UAE. It's an amazing snack food to be frank. Great to see it on HN!

greggman 10y ago

Just please don't call it paw-key. It's poe-key (rhymes with low-key) although in truth there's a gap between poe & key https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s3gIrqQhwkM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s3gIrqQhwkM And yes I know someone is going to complain it's not English. So what. Neither is the pronounciation of pizza. If you can bother to say pee-tsa instead of piz-ah you can bother to say poe-key instead of paw-key

q1t 10y ago
What about pronunciation?)
ocb 10y ago
To be that nitpicky asshole, "pizza" as an example doesn't really do anything to argue your case because there's plenty of non-English-language brands that Americans typically pronounce with an English pronunciation (Volkswagen, IKEA, Nutella, etc.)
dwc 10y ago
Just say ポッキー and you'll say it right every time.
beachstartup 10y ago
i'm going to keep saying pawkey.
yladiz 10y ago
It doesn't matter if people understand you. It's fine if you want to say it like it's said in Japanese, but don't be pedantic and make others feel bad for saying it a specific way.
mwfunk 10y ago
Do you correctly pronounce "Nikon" as "Nee con", then explain to your English-speaking friends that that's how it's pronounced in Japan even though Nikon marketing doesn't even use that pronunciation in English-speaking countries? Do you correctly pronounce "champagne" the French way around your English-speaking friends, even though the French pronunciation sounds almost nothing like "sham pain" so of course you have to explain yourself every single time you say the word? Does actual phlegm emerge from your throat whenever you correctly pronounce the Greek letter chi at the end of TeX and LaTeX, or do you just say "lay tech" or (god forbid) "lay techs"? Most importantly, do you say "guh noo slash lin ucks" and go around correcting everyone who doesn't? Because if you do any of these things, please, please, please stop. Please. Please. Seriously, it is so not worth it.

groceryheist 10y ago

It's like mit scratch. Except the underlying purpose is to sell junk food, the only sprite you can control is a corporate mascot, and you do so alone instead of in a social platform. The focus on problem solving may be good for helping kids learn and practice solving problems procedurally. The free form nature of scratch gives a lot of freedom for goofing off, which can be a good thing. http://scratch.mit.edu http://scratch.mit.edu

keerthiko 10y ago
While you didn't say so explicitly, you sound disparaging of this initiative in favour of Scratch being better in every way. Scratch is great and noble and better in every way as an isolated programming learning tool, but it's worth noting the reach and marketability of Pocky to get kids interested in the whole scene. You (parents, kids, non-CS-oriented teachers and mentors) aren't going to find and use Scratch without the prime directive of "I want a kid-friendly programming learning tool". But now you can get the kids Pocky, which you may have gotten anyway since no kid is going to complain about that, and they can learn something meaningful and cool with a character that has context they know and appreciate, unlike scratch's characters that exist in their bubble. Actually being able to impact a much larger audience even with a less ideal experience, is net worth much more than a stellar tool that cannot break past a high activation barrier and caters to a very tiny audience. Like Settlers of Catan for introducing people to board games outside Monopoly, and IFLS (I Fucking Love Science) for getting people interested in space, biology, etc. These seem like perverted contractions of beautiful things, but at the end of the day they get more people interested and that's a good thing. I for one remember countless mornings reading and learning the backs of the cereal boxes as I had breakfast getting ready for school, and those mornings would have been so much more productive building Pocky programs, but there was no way I was going to fire up Scratch and create programs there.

nether 10y ago

Kids should be outside playing and interacting with other kids, not coding and gobbling candy.

jameslk 10y ago
I was one of those kids who stayed glued to a computer indoors and had all my friends online. Now I have a career and friends across the globe to thank for it. Not every person should follow a prescribed path.
- overcast 10y ago
  How often do you socially interact with those global friends, in person? I'm all for learning awesome computer skills, but there is a time to be a child, and a time to be an adult. I wouldn't exchange growing up in the woods with BMX bikes, skateboards, and vine swings with the neighborhood kids. For sitting behind a computer all summer vacation, messaging people on the internet. I now have a career, and friends all over the world as well.
  - jameslk 10y ago
    In person? That's difficult for me since I'm not often able to travel to Finland, the UK, Egypt, etc. I interact with my online friends nearly daily, online. My point was that I would of never have met such diverse people early on had I not grown up around a computer + Internet. Nor would I have necessarily been able to get a job programming right out of high school that helped pay for my college education. I'm not claiming my path was superior in any way, only that there's more than one way through life.
    - overcast 10y ago
      Of course you would have, just like the rest of us have friends all over the world now. I respect your decisions, and I'm glad you're doing well however I'm not going to agree spending your youth indoors was a good choice. There is no argument for what this type of lifestyle is doing to this current generation. They are basically incapable of socially interacting and dating.

zump 10y ago

Kids learning to code will save the world.