10 ms·
The Unix Game
- jedimastert 7y agoNot a fan of the idea that I can't move forward until I log into something. I'm fine with my games not being saved, I just wanted to mess around.
- mythz 7y agoI hope their analytics show how many user engagements their losing by trying to force Sign Up before anyone can evaluate it.
- reificator 7y agoNot a fan of scratch-like UIs but I figured I'd play around a bit. "Solved" the first problem and went to continue, but was met with a signup wall. Immediately left with no intention to come back. Things like this absolutely destroy your funnel. Prompt me to sign up after I've made some progress, not before I've even gotten a feel for what you're offering.
- ninkendo 7y agoSaved me a click!
- openstep 7y agoCouldn't have said it better myself
- kmill 7y agoThis is a game made by a research lab for fun, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Unix. I'm not sure they're too interested in funnels, beyond letting people have a little fun (and some advertising that something like the Bell Labs of old might still exist). The signup annoyed me, too, but it just wants a username and password for the leaderboard. It's not collecting your e-mail address. (There was some kind of bug with the user creation step where it would keep prompting for your country. Reloading the page is a workaround.)
- imglorp 7y agoA bookmarkable private URL, ie some kind of unique token for each user, would have been easier than messing around with emails and annoying users.
- kmill 7y agoThere are no e-mails involved if you choose to create an account, just a choice of username and password. Sure, there are lots of things they could have done better, but I admire outreach projects like this from research labs.
- mjcohen 7y agoFrom the initial screen, I would use gawk (or awk if I had to).
- lukifer 7y agoI'd be interested in a non-gamified CLI-builder GUI in this style; it'd be especially cool to surface flags from man pages. Many CLIs follow conventions or are easy to remember for basic use cases, but as soon as one is juggling a dozen flags and multiple pipes (ffmpeg comes to mind), it can be a tedious workflow to do it all from a terminal.
- shhsshs 7y agoI usually resort to making a bash script with a bunch of intermediate files at each step so I can see what’s happening. Here’s a tool I’ve seen around but never had a big need for: https://github.com/akavel/up https://github.com/akavel/up
- seldomI 7y agoThere's a block based editor for CLI programs in development: https://app.code-it-studio.de/project/303 https://app.code-it-studio.de/project/303 We made it for educational purposes though, you can only run the programs inside the browser (yet).
- bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y agoThe webpage has too much JavaScript and doesn't completely load under my slow network, so I'm not sure what are allowed to use in the game. But to an first impression, I think the game should encourage the participate to solve the problems in different approaches, although Unix pipe is powerful, sometimes a 5-line awk program or a "for loop" in bash is more effective.
- redka 7y agoThese would be really easy if I could use my little tool [1] [1] https://github.com/thisredone/rb https://github.com/thisredone/rb
- Pete_D 7y agoThis looks like fun. It'd be really nice if there was an option to just type the commands in instead of using the GUI, though I guess that would defeat the purpose a bit.
- dugo 7y agothis
- geolgau 7y agoLet's make a unix game where you can't type commands in a terminal emulator... OK! Plus, facebook login? fuck off!
- acd 7y agoKen Thompson and David Richie, Joe Osanna, Bob Morris, Dough McIlroy listed in the first game created UNIX. Ken was motivated by wanting to play games on the Bell Labs PDP. "As a part of porting the game to the PDP-7, Thompson developed his own operating system, which later formed the core of the Unix operating system. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Travel_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Travel_(video_game) Now the web runs on Linux which is similar but is not UNIX. I think its a good honor by Bell Labs creating a game that we can play. http://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/hist.html http://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/hist.html "The summer of 69" Three great things coming out of 1969, UNIX, the Apollo 11 mission walk on the moon and Woodstock festival!
- dugo 7y agoI can type the solutions in blind, the GUI fucks me up.
- falcor84 7y agoThat send to be fully intentional - it's more challenging to solve the problems with a limited subset of commands and inputs (e.g. you're only allowed to grep for specific patterns)
- ben174 7y agoIf you enjoy this, you might also enjoy www.vimgolf.com
- cat199 7y agocool idea. but.. 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_(Unix)#Useless_use_of_cat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_(Unix)#Useless_use_of_cat 2) speaking of #1, wheres < > &| etc? 3) Question #2: Extract only Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie's last names. Hint: look at Thompson and Ritchie's names in the list. What's special about the position of these lines in the file? Can you find a command that lets you get just those lines? um: egrep '(Thompson|Ritchie)' file there is more than one way to skin a cat, and some of these don't require static/fixed field numbers. and even then: `sed -ne 3,4p`. wheres that?
- kentbrew 7y agoLost me at "please log in or register."
- tomvc 7y agoSpeaking up here as the person that designed the game at Bell Labs: we'll get rid of the signup wall - it really was meant only to get a unique nickname so we can put your score up on the leaderboard. We like the suggestion of generating a unique bookmarkable url instead. As for why we don't allow you to type commands into a terminal: the game is as much about solving a puzzle with the basic blocks you're given as it is about shell programming. For newcomers the scratch interface a nice way to explore the kinds of things one can do with the unix utilities (in case it wasn't clear: the game is meant to be approachable to people unfamiliar with unix) And besides, if we'd give you hackers a full-blown shell, you'd solve most of the challenges in no-time - where's the fun in that? :) cheers, Tom
- tomvc 7y agoAlso, for those of you that already solved most of the challenges - stay tuned. We'll launch more challenges during a big Unix 50th anniversary celebration event taking place next week in Bell Labs HQ in Murray Hill, NJ.
- baud147258 7y agoAs someone very unfamiliar with a Unix, it's an interesting learning experience. But I would have prefer to know earlier the existence of the on-hover command documentation: perhaps add a button next to each commands that would show the same documentation; that would help people unfamiliar with Unix to know what they can do. Also perhaps a canonical/best practice answer for each question could be educational, perhaps with comments explaining why, again to help the newcomers: there's a bunch of valid answers, but I feel like there should be a better (or at least more elegant) solution.
- baud147258 7y agoI've had some fun, (re)learned a little about Unix commands, since I'm only using Windows.
- btheeten 7y agoWe took a brick out the wall. You can now play anonymously. Thanks for the feedback!
- baud147258 7y agoWhat's the valid output for question 2 on Unix Evolution? I tried Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ, 07974 & Murray Hill Computer Center, but both weren't accepted
- btheeten 7y agoMurray Hill
- baud147258 7y agoThank you.
- ncmncm 7y agoWhen I run it: 1. The "c", " belle", and "poems" categories do not turn green when solved. Furthermore, none of them are counted solved on the leaderboard. This is probably why the leaderboard scores are bimodal. 2. Poem 4 is fundamentally misleading. It doesn't want the letters arranged in any sort of cross shape, it just wants a word like the others; producing the cross shape is impossible with the commands available, because the cut command does not accept ranges.
- btheeten 7y agoOn 1.: you need to solve all questions in the challenge for the challenge to turn green. Try re-submitting your solutions. It should have remembered them. On 2.: the results should not be arranged as a cross; the source is.
- ncmncm 7y agoI have systematically re-submitted all the solutions several times. All are judged solved. Look at your leaderboard. Is that a plausible distribution of scores?
- btheeten 7y agoYes it is. We have 3847 registered players out of which 131 have top scores... We don't show the full leaderboard; only the top 30, and then you, you +3, you -3 so you know where you are approximately. Granted, this could be made clearer...
- btheeten 7y agoAnd now we do make it clearer. Hope you like it. Thanks for the feedback!
- ncmncm 7y agoNone of this addresses the problem that it is failing to record successful solutions. It's great that it works ok for some players, but if this degree of dismissal is typical, I see no reason to communicate further.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]