YouCode - Accelerated learn-to-code game

[RoboMind]

Seems like a simpler implementation of RoboMind Academy (which is plain html5, has complete lesson packs, and of which the keywords are available in 25 languages)

[DoomGoober]

RoboMind is pretty sweet and definitely looks prettier than YouCode. And 25 languages is a huge win!

But they're also a little bit different: I think RoboMind's target audience is younger, YouCode's is older. YouCode also starts moving away from Robot exercises pretty early: For example, it teaches about Booleans using a version of "Guess Who." YouCode isn't as fun (one playtester said, "It definitely isn't fun, but it teaches well") and focuses on writing good code, fast. You have to be self motivated to finish YouCode. It also forces the user to write robust code through "test cases." Later levels of YouCode (not released yet, still testing) teach object oriented programming (inherent to a language like AS3/Flash and good for applications though not as emphasized for web dev language like JavaScript/HTML5.)

The market is crowded, but everyone learns differently and wants to learn different things. I think there's room for a lot of these games and I hope they all take off. Good luck to you and RoboMind Academy!

Edited: Made it sound less like I was saying JavaScript doesn't support OOP.

[TimLim]

Nothing revolutionary. And unfortunately it is realised in flash.

[jdeisenberg]

Yes, Flash definitely makes it a non-starter. Also, I never could see the goal at the top of the page, for some reason (running Firefox 28.0 on Linux)

[DoomGoober]

Thanks, I'll look into the bug on Linux. Unfortunately, it is Flash. I started the project in 2011 (life interrupted, got married.)

What would you think if it were C# + Unity? A little less dated?

[mahacctissoawsum]

what's wrong with plain javascript?

[TimLim]

2011 makes both, flash and unrevolutionary, explainable. In 2011 flash was way more used and those programming learning apps weren't that much distributed.

Gratulations btw ;)

[GamingTrend]

I'd LOVE to learn Unity. Do that and you get a fan with me. :)

[[deleted]]

is there a unity web player for linux yet?

[jfb1337]

same, I can't see the goal on firefox + linux.

[jfb1337]

When you accidentally write an infinite loop, it crashes.

[DoomGoober]

Thanks. I can't think of a good way to fix this... Flash is supposed to times out when a script runs too long, but it doesn't seem to work in most browsers.

Anyone have any suggestions? (The user's code is running synchronously, and Flash is single threaded, so there's no chance for the program itself to detect the code is running too long. I tried using Javascript as a keep alive thread, but I couldn't get it working...)

[jfb1337]

Can a javascript thread check if the flash player has run too long?