> " Is it possible to learn inheritance, polymorphism, event handling, and > inner classes, all while dodging bullets and executing precision attack > maneuvers? A surprisingly addictive teaching-tool-turned-game-craze called > Robocode is about to make this a reality for Java developers worldwide. > Follow along as Sing Li disarms Robocode and starts you on your way to > building your own customized lean, mean, fighting machine. " > > http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-robocode/index.html > http://robocode.sourceforge.net/ > > francois
Yes, I'm pretty sure Robocode is one of those being field tested by Saturday Academy, although not in my classes so far (I checked it out on my own time though, eyeballed some of the Java). I'd be in the market for something similar, although I'd like a more introspective Turtle and more psychological challenges, ala the Zoombini series, Myst and Uru. I think what's happening is Python's edu-siggers are persuasively demonstrating that entire Logolike robotic play worlds are within reach of a solo coder. They work actually pretty much as advertised, come with documentation and demos, plus you get to study their inner workings and learn from a potential peer (an ideal combination). The overview experience one gets from rolling one's own, better qualifies one for project management positions when a larger team shows up, ready to recode it in OpenGL or whatever, with high def Turtles swimming amidst colorful corals, looking for Nemo, avoiding natural predators or whatever. In other words: as I learned long ago, the solo developer is quickly outclassed by what teamwork can do, when it comes to finalizing a commercial and/or educational product. We've discussed this several times on this list, in connection with game development. In my own career, I couldn't compete with the corporate spin-offs from the likes of my CORIS and CLAIR (inhouse cardiology apps). I've never been much of a game developer (but I did use PyGame to write myself an open source PowerPoint alternative). Some people misconstrue the open source revolution as a battle against large companies, but that's not the case. What IBM is doing for Linux is huge, and not because SCO thinks it owns the Unix brand name (what could be more irrelevant?). But on the other hand, there's no substitute for rolling one's own, and how one gets to be on these high powered teams, is by wrapping one's head around the problem, and publishing solutions, even if just in pseudo-code. In an already big project, building credibility may involve simply submitting small patches (you need overview for that too, where multiple dependencies are involved). But a lot of times, one just goes for green field development, per the recent Pata Pata example. Show what you're capable of, advertise your skills as a lone hacker, have emacs will code. People think: wow, what return could we get with more people like this on our payroll? A lot, I would expect. The Python community is overflowing with skilled people. And the meme pool is set to expand even more, as a new generation starts hacking on cell phones. Python: the full monty for mobile applications Victor Keegan Thursday June 22, 2006 http://technology.guardian.co.uk/opinion/story/0,,1802590,00.html (my thanks to Phillip for the heads up on this one). Kirby _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
