Ask HN: Is writing text-based games a good introduction to programming?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3204844

by seagreen • 15 years ago

3 6 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

tikhonj• 15 years ago

The very first CS class I took in college was based on SICP (taught in Scheme, for reference). By this point, I had already been programming for a while, but there were plenty of students with very limited exposure to programming as well.

One of the projects we had was writing a text-based RPG. This was to highlight the ideas behind OOP, which we learned after functional programming. Initially, the idea seemed to have merit--writing a game seemed to be a fun thing to do. However, I got quickly bogged down in boring detail; it turned out that writing a text based game has a lot of boring, repetitive work for each of the cool bits. It was the most tedious project in the class overall.

The final project we did was implementing a Logo interpreter. This was completely different--the ratio of cool and insightful stuff to boring fiddly bits was much, much better. Also, unlike the text-based game, even a barely working final result felt brilliant. Being able to program in a language I had just implemented was magical. Playing a text-based game with a working engine but a poor story line did not measure up.

So far, this has been my favorite course. However, I remember the text-based game as annoying and not particularly illuminating; it does not compare at all with the logo interpreter.

Overall, I think that too much of a text-based game is repetitive and boring, and it relies too much on non-programming bits (the dialog, the setting, the story) to be consistently inspiring to a new programmer.

seagreen2• 15 years ago

Thanks, that's really helpful. Though at my current level of ability a text based game is plenty challenging:)

drcode• 15 years ago

I would say "yes" if you're learning a language that has a REPL (such as the Lisp languages.) A REPL is already basically an interface for a text-based game and learning about one helps you learn about the other.

That's why I create a text adventure game in "Land of Lisp" and on my website: http://lisperati.com/casting.html

seagreen2• 15 years ago

That's awesome. Thanks very much.

TheCowboy• 15 years ago

http://learnpythonthehardway.org/

This book takes takes this approach with a number of its examples and projects.

And I think the book is a good introduction to programming and Python.

pekk• 15 years ago

If you like text-based games, it is a good introduction.

Otherwise, only really tiny self-contained examples are good. You need to break it down into more 'atomic' pieces - at which point you are no longer developing a text game.

You could use a really trivial VERB NOUN parser instead of the usual RPN calculator example. You can use a directed-graph world as a showcase for linked lists. TCP is often learned by writing a simple chat server.

Higher-level languages might make it easier to constrain this sort of project to a few hours.

But most people do not like text games and doing a proper job is probably an order of magnitude more complex than you imagine it to be. So actually writing or modifying a text game is only a great idea if it is motivating to the learner.

Ask HN: Is writing text-based games a good introduction to programming?

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