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Show HN: Code Kingdoms – a game that teaches kids to code
- rosstargett 13y agoJust a bit of background: We've been teaching Computer Science and programming in schools for several years and noticed the resources are not tailored to the kids themselves. Code Kingdoms teaches 6-13 year olds code in a way they enjoy: by playing a game and creating their own levels. Our aim is simple, to create a new generation of programmers by getting them to code in ways they find fun. Appreciate any feedback.
- karl_gluck 13y agoFirst off, great idea! The screenshots look friendly and I think it would be something I'd have used when I was a kid. That said, you have some stability/UX issues. The loading delays are very long. I can easily see kids losing interest because it takes >2 minutes to load the Quick Play game. Then, once I was in the game, the graphics rendering was laggy and made my computer stutter / the screen flash. Shrinking the window made it run fast enough. I walked around a bit but as soon as I encountered the first duck the game went into loading mode again... and has been stuck there ever since.
- rosstargett 13y agoSorry about the duck issue, we've fixed and pushed an update. The slow response is due to the high server load we've experienced in the last hour.
- hoopism 13y agoI hit "quick play" and it asked if I was connected to the internet... well played, game. Well played.
- karl_gluck 13y agoSame. Hit it again and it works.
- hoopism 13y agoIs that level 2?
- rosstargett 13y agoSorry about this, caused by a server load spike. We're changing a setting on the VPS now to allow more connections.
- pyromine 13y agoI went to check this out, and my first two questions are how is this significantly different from Code Combat, and any idea why quick play isn't working. I'm actually trying to play from a school network and it doesn't seem to work. I'll come back and edit my comment latter with more full impressions when I actually get to check it out.
- john_g 13y agolooks so much fun guys.
- danexxtone 13y agoI get a MySQL error on the about page. May want to hide that, especially because it shows a username.
- hugheth 13y agothanks for flagging this. looks to us like a server load problem, fixing now
- umut 13y agowhat is this obsession with teaching your kids how to program? I would not want my future kids do the same always worrying occupation that I do... probably the world as well as programming will be totally different then anyways. Just teach him/her some analytical thinking through 100 year old games and let the evolution play his part. There is no such thing as full control of your kid's destiny, just forget about it already...
- rosstargett 13y agoI completely agree with you. We focus on creating levels and computational thinking. But most importantly we want kids of all ages and of both genders to be wanting to become Computer Scientists.
- reg29 13y agoTeaching kids how to code does not mean that they will become programmers. Just like teaching them how to fish does not mean they will become fishermen. You are teaching them a skill that they can use (or not) in their adult life.
- lutusp 13y ago> what is this obsession with teaching your kids how to program? I would not want my future kids do the same always worrying occupation that I do ... But chances are they won't. Review the history of literacy and print media. Early on, reading and writing was a specialty practiced by cloistered monks, and delivered in finished form to an ignorant public. Later on, because of technical breakthroughs, social policy changes rightly decreed that everyone should become literate. We take for granted that everyone should know how to read and write words, but we're in transition with respect to the same issue in computer literacy -- the ability to, so to speak, read and write code. Being able to program a computer in the future won't remotely resemble how it looks today, any more than modern print literacy resembles quill pens and parchment scrolls.
- Forplax 13y agoWe drive our kids to ballet class, but are reasonably sure they will never be professional dancers. Same for baseball, violin, karate, and so on. But those activities generally do grow things like teamwork, patience, coordination, fitness, etc. Not to mention an enjoyable sense of satisfaction when a difficult task is finally accomplished after a lot of hard work. Enriching foundations and building useful skillsets is not the same thing as taking "full control of your kid's destiny".
- umut 13y agowhat is this obsession with teaching your kids how to program? I would not want my future kids do the same always worrying occupation that I do... probably the world as well as programming will be totally different then anyways. Just teach him/her some analytical thinking through 100 year old games and let the evolution play his part. There is no such thing as full control of your kid's destiny, just forget about it already...
- umut 13y agowhat is this obsession with teaching your kids how to program? I would not want my future kids do the same always worrying occupation that I do... probably the world as well as programming will be totally different then anyways. Just teach him/her some analytical thinking through 100 year old games and let the evolution play his part. There is no such thing as full control of your kid's destiny, just forget about it already...
- umut 13y agowhat is this obsession with teaching your kids how to program? I would not want my future kids do the same always worrying occupation that I do... probably the world as well as programming will be totally different then anyways. Just teach him/her some analytical thinking through 100 year old games and let the evolution play his part. There is no such thing as full control of your kid's destiny, just forget about it already...
- andrewgjohnson 13y agoYou should teach kids not to output PHP warnings in production.
- abhiagr 13y agoReally nice idea!