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I saw many games trying to teach programming, but never heard of any of them gaining significant popularity. I wonder why? I guess "play games instead of readi

I saw many games trying to teach programming, but never heard of any of them gaining significant popularity. I wonder why? I guess "play games instead of reading books" idea attracts audience with low motivation?

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agentwiggles 4y ago
> I guess "play games instead of reading books" idea attracts audience with low motivation? This seems a little uncharitable in its premise to me. I've never had all that much success learning from programming books, and the success I've had seemed to happen mostly when I would take the examples and run them and pull them apart and break them and fix them (etc, etc, etc). From the other side, well designed games are remarkable in their ability to teach concepts to a player (even if, in the general case, they're not concepts with applicability outside the game). It seems obvious to me that some kind of interactivity is really helpful in learning. Not too much of a stretch from there to guess that the best form of programming education might be some kind of game/book hybrid.
curioussavage 4y ago
Ha, I never heard of any textbooks gain significant popularity either. I guess reading textbooks attracts audience with low motivation. In seriousness though why do you think any educational game would ever gain popularity anywhere close to popular video games.And what the popularity of the material even have to do with the motivation of its consumers???
- vultour 4y ago
  There are (used to be?) widely recommended books for certain topics, such as K&R's "The C Programming Language". I don't think any programming games are anywhere near the popularity of these books.
  - TulliusCicero 4y ago
    I think CodeCombat is pretty widely recommended specifically for teaching coding to kids. Not sure if it counts -- it's more coding lessons that are gamified in overall structure, and also the lessons themselves have gaming aesthetics (e.g. "Write code to move your hero to kill these orcs and open treasure chests"). There's a ton of resources for this area now though, I'm not sure I can point to any one thing as a standard.
schwartzworld 4y ago
We all have different ways of getting motivated and learning. You shouldn't yuck other peoples' yum. I've definitely heard of some games that teach programming skills getting popular. For example, https://flexboxfroggy.com/ https://flexboxfroggy.com/ http://www.flexboxdefense.com/ http://www.flexboxdefense.com/ for teaching css layout. https://www.freecodecamp.org/ https://www.freecodecamp.org/ isn't marketed as a game, but absolutely feels like one when you are going through the program. https://www.hackthebox.com/ https://www.hackthebox.com/ is another great example. As to reading books, I used a lot of resources to become a programmer, but books weren't one of them. I'd wager hardly anybody uses books today.
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- rustyminnow 4y ago
  I really liked https://mastery.games/flexboxzombies/ https://mastery.games/flexboxzombies/
- sureglymop 4y ago
  I learned about C with a book called "Head First C" about two years ago and it was amazing. It was kind of like a game, written in order to be fun. I learned so much in that book, about system calls, signals, file descriptors, processes, pipes etc.. it was amazing. I also used the AWK Programming Language about a year ago and it was amazing too. It was definitely a challenge to keep reading the book because i think I've become so used to instant gratification but books require multiple reading sessions... I have pretty strong ADHD so i actually feel really accomplished just by finishing and working through a (seemingly simple) book. :)
hiccuphippo 4y ago
Factorio looks like a very popular game.
asr21 4y ago
I learnt CSS Grid and CSS flexbox using those froggy game. But yeah, just one data point in millions who don't use games.
bravetraveler 4y ago
Typically because they lean daunting, not as fun/engaging as the proposed audience expected. There are quite a few popular ones. Bitburner encouraged this JS hater (me) to give it a try.
TulliusCicero 4y ago
I suppose that depends on what you mean by popularity. * CodeCombat is gamified programming lessons and seems to be reasonably popular with kids. * Human Resource Machine teaches assembly language programming and was popular -- it even got a sequel, Seven Billion Humans. * Robot Turtles was a kickstarted code-teaching board game that became popular enough to become a ThinkFun staple (you can tell because of how cheap it is).
shadowofneptune 4y ago
Games which present you with a text box and ask you to write in a language to solve a problem feel too much like being tricked into eating your vegetables. That's not saying that programming games can't work, but thinking about it as programming can get in the way. Dijkstra's famous quote is that computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes, and games are proof of that. Factorio is often given as an example of managing complexity, as another response said. TIS-100 has the aesthetics of assembly programming but the substance is actually a game that teaches hardware parallelism. Even something as simple as having students act out the 'dining philosophers' problem can be thought of as a game.

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agentwiggles 4y ago

> I guess "play games instead of reading books" idea attracts audience with low motivation? This seems a little uncharitable in its premise to me. I've never had all that much success learning from programming books, and the success I've had seemed to happen mostly when I would take the examples and run them and pull them apart and break them and fix them (etc, etc, etc). From the other side, well designed games are remarkable in their ability to teach concepts to a player (even if, in the general case, they're not concepts with applicability outside the game). It seems obvious to me that some kind of interactivity is really helpful in learning. Not too much of a stretch from there to guess that the best form of programming education might be some kind of game/book hybrid.

curioussavage 4y ago

Ha, I never heard of any textbooks gain significant popularity either. I guess reading textbooks attracts audience with low motivation. In seriousness though why do you think any educational game would ever gain popularity anywhere close to popular video games.And what the popularity of the material even have to do with the motivation of its consumers???

vultour 4y ago
There are (used to be?) widely recommended books for certain topics, such as K&R's "The C Programming Language". I don't think any programming games are anywhere near the popularity of these books.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  I think CodeCombat is pretty widely recommended specifically for teaching coding to kids. Not sure if it counts -- it's more coding lessons that are gamified in overall structure, and also the lessons themselves have gaming aesthetics (e.g. "Write code to move your hero to kill these orcs and open treasure chests"). There's a ton of resources for this area now though, I'm not sure I can point to any one thing as a standard.

schwartzworld 4y ago

We all have different ways of getting motivated and learning. You shouldn't yuck other peoples' yum. I've definitely heard of some games that teach programming skills getting popular. For example, https://flexboxfroggy.com/ https://flexboxfroggy.com/ http://www.flexboxdefense.com/ http://www.flexboxdefense.com/ for teaching css layout. https://www.freecodecamp.org/ https://www.freecodecamp.org/ isn't marketed as a game, but absolutely feels like one when you are going through the program. https://www.hackthebox.com/ https://www.hackthebox.com/ is another great example. As to reading books, I used a lot of resources to become a programmer, but books weren't one of them. I'd wager hardly anybody uses books today.

deleted 4y ago
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rustyminnow 4y ago
I really liked https://mastery.games/flexboxzombies/ https://mastery.games/flexboxzombies/
sureglymop 4y ago
I learned about C with a book called "Head First C" about two years ago and it was amazing. It was kind of like a game, written in order to be fun. I learned so much in that book, about system calls, signals, file descriptors, processes, pipes etc.. it was amazing. I also used the AWK Programming Language about a year ago and it was amazing too. It was definitely a challenge to keep reading the book because i think I've become so used to instant gratification but books require multiple reading sessions... I have pretty strong ADHD so i actually feel really accomplished just by finishing and working through a (seemingly simple) book. :)

hiccuphippo 4y ago

Factorio looks like a very popular game.

asr21 4y ago

I learnt CSS Grid and CSS flexbox using those froggy game. But yeah, just one data point in millions who don't use games.

bravetraveler 4y ago

Typically because they lean daunting, not as fun/engaging as the proposed audience expected. There are quite a few popular ones. Bitburner encouraged this JS hater (me) to give it a try.

TulliusCicero 4y ago

I suppose that depends on what you mean by popularity. * CodeCombat is gamified programming lessons and seems to be reasonably popular with kids. * Human Resource Machine teaches assembly language programming and was popular -- it even got a sequel, Seven Billion Humans. * Robot Turtles was a kickstarted code-teaching board game that became popular enough to become a ThinkFun staple (you can tell because of how cheap it is).

shadowofneptune 4y ago

Games which present you with a text box and ask you to write in a language to solve a problem feel too much like being tricked into eating your vegetables. That's not saying that programming games can't work, but thinking about it as programming can get in the way. Dijkstra's famous quote is that computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes, and games are proof of that. Factorio is often given as an example of managing complexity, as another response said. TIS-100 has the aesthetics of assembly programming but the substance is actually a game that teaches hardware parallelism. Even something as simple as having students act out the 'dining philosophers' problem can be thought of as a game.