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Speaking 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 c
by tomvc 7y ago
Speaking 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.