Thanks for the mention! We are working on a side-by-side blocks-and-code mode with two-way sync that should be pretty good for this.
HN user
nwinter
VP Product & Growth at Gray Swan AI. nick@grayswan.ai
Before that: CEO/Cofounder at CodeCombat (YC W14): a coding game that teaches kids to code. nick@codecombat.com
Before that: CTO/Cofounder at Skritter: an app for teaching Chinese and Japanese characters through writing and spaced repetition. nick@skritter.com
More projects at: http://www.nickwinter.net
CodeCombat (YC W14) | FULL-TIME | REMOTE | Software Engineer CodeCombat (https://codecombat.com/about) is a programming game for learning to code. We are currently 45 people across the world, funded by a16z and YC, aiming to level up computer science education both in and out of the classroom. Long term, we are evolving education through game-based learning. We're open source and looking to add to our engineering team.
More details at https://jobs.lever.co/codecombat/7a4db25a-174f-40bd-866a-7c9...
CodeCombat (YC W14) | FULL-TIME | ONSITE | Beijing Software Engineer
CodeCombat (https://codecombat.com/about) is a programming game for learning to code. We are currently 25 people in SF and 4 in Beijing, funded by a16z and YC, aiming to level up computer science education both in and out of the classroom. Long term, we are evolving education through game-based learning. We're open source and looking to add to our engineering team in China.
More details at https://jobs.lever.co/codecombat/623b1bba-5686-4112-86ff-f99...
CodeCombat (YC W14) | FULL-TIME | ONSITE | San Francisco | Beijing
Senior Software Engineer, Senior Game Designer, China General Manager
CodeCombat (http://codecombat.com/about) is a programming game for learning to code. We are currently 18 people, funded by a16z and YC, in SF, aiming to level up computer science education both in and out of the classroom. Long term, we are evolving education through game-based learning. We're open source and looking to add a core engineer and game designer to our SF team, and a China general manager to open our Beijing office.
More details at https://jobs.lever.co/codecombat
CodeCombat (YC W14) | FULL-TIME / PART-TIME | ONSITE / REMOTE | San Francisco | Senior Software Engineer, Game Designer, Customer Support Specialist
CodeCombat (http://codecombat.com/about) is a programming game for learning to code. We are currently 15 people, funded by a16z and YC, in SF, aiming to level up computer science education both in and out of the classroom. Long term, we are evolving education through game-based learning. We're open source and looking to add a core engineer and game designer to our SF team, and a customer support specialist part-time remote. More details at https://jobs.lever.co/codecombat
CodeCombat (YC W14) | FULL-TIME / PART-TIME | ONSITE / REMOTE | San Francisco | Senior Software Engineer, Curriculum Development Lead, Game Designer, Customer Support Specialist
CodeCombat (http://codecombat.com/about) is a programming game for learning to code. We are currently 15 people, funded by a16z and YC, in SF, aiming to level up computer science education both in and out of the classroom. Long term, we are evolving education through game-based learning. We're open source and looking to add a core engineer, curriculum developer, and game designer to our SF team, and a customer support specialist part-time remote. More details at https://jobs.lever.co/codecombat
CodeCombat (YC W14) | FULL-TIME | ONSITE | San Francisco | Senior Software Engineer
CodeCombat (http://codecombat.com/about) is a programming game for learning to code. We are currently 13 people, funded by a16z and YC, in SF, aiming to level up computer science education both in and out of the classroom. Long term, we are evolving education through game-based learning. We're open source and looking to add a core engineer to our elite engineering team. More details at https://jobs.lever.co/codecombat/18a8182d-938a-4e2a-b2a2-ccf...
CodeCombat (YC W14) | FULL-TIME | ONSITE | San Francisco | Senior Backend Engineer, Senior Frontend Engineer, and Sales Development Representative CodeCombat (http://codecombat.com/about) is a programming game for learning to code. We are currently 13 people, funded by a16z and YC, in SF, aiming to level up computer science education both in and out of the classroom. Long term, we are evolving education through game-based learning. We're 100% open source and hiring for roles on both sales and engineering. See https://jobs.lever.co/codecombat for more details.
CodeCombat (YC W14) | FULL-TIME | ONSITE | San Francisco | Senior Backend Engineer, Senior Frontend Engineer, Customer Success Manager, and Sales Development Representative
CodeCombat (http://codecombat.com/about) is a programming game for learning to code. We are currently 13 people, funded by a16z and YC, in SF, aiming to level up computer science education both in and out of the classroom. Long term, we are evolving education through game-based learning. We're 100% open source and hiring for roles on both sales and engineering. See https://jobs.lever.co/codecombat for more details.
CodeCombat (YC W14) - http://codecombat.com - onsite in San Francisco
We're making a programming game for learning to code. This is going to be the default way that everyone learns programming. We're 100% open source and looking for sales and engineering.
See https://jobs.lever.co/codecombat for more details.
CodeCombat (YC W14) - http://codecombat.com - onsite in San Francisco
We're making a programming game for learning to code. This is going to be the default way that everyone learns programming. We're 100% open source and looking for developers, game designers, and UI/UX.
See https://jobs.lever.co/codecombat for more details.
Just keep clicking the red levels–those are the free ones. The blue ones are the subscriber bonus levels.
CodeCombat (YC W14) - http://codecombat.com - onsite in San Francisco
We're making a programming game for learning to code. This is going to be the default way that everyone learns programming. We're 100% open source and looking for developers and game designers.
See https://jobs.lever.co/codecombat for more details.
If you want to play around a little bit with Io, we have an experimental Io mode on CodeCombat, so you can play in your browser: http://codecombat.com/play
If you want to play around a lot with Io, you could help us extend the parser so that it doesn't break after level 10. :P https://github.com/dariusf/iota
Congratulations, guys! Are you going to change offices, or will you still be above me?
You probably wouldn't want to even click the TMZ link in the first place when you knew you were making the video, since the post-production is so onerous. It's like a precommitment that you're not going to get distracted. In fact, when I did my maniac week, I precommitted to not doing any post-processing, and it helped me focus a lot. I would think, "hmm, I wonder what the strongest dog is!" but then realize I couldn't slack off on video, so I wouldn't even Google it like normal.
We have experimental Python support now! blog.codecombat.com/new-experimental-languages-python-lua-clojure-and-io
Thank you! I'm tracking the bug over here and will fix soon: https://github.com/codecombat/codecombat/issues/1153
We do have a lot of students and teachers using it, but we haven't built a long-enough beginner campaign to provide much of a curriculum yet. That's something we'll be focusing on starting in early fall as US schools start swinging again.
Our mission is to become the way that pretty much everyone learns to program.
Can you email nick@codecombat.com to help us reproduce this? It sounds like a form is getting submitted somehow, which shouldn't happen. I haven't been able to reproduce in Firefox, Chrome, or Safari yet.
Sorry about this–we take security seriously.
Hehe, from our point of view, the intro/tutorial needs a lot of work–if you watch the playtesters, anyway. We will continue to work on it.
Most of our libraries and engines and such are listed here: https://github.com/codecombat/codecombat/wiki/Third-party-so...
There are probably a few more in use. If you are really interested, all the code is open source, so you can dig into it here: https://github.com/codecombat/codecombat
I think you probably played the beginner levels? The tournament level in question was http://codecombat.com/play/ladder/greed
You can still play this one, there's just no tournament cutoff date or prizes any more. There are three other ongoing arenas here: http://codecombat.com/play/ladder
We're working on the next tournament level, which will be ready for playtesting soon–message me if you want to help! Otherwise, it should be launched in a few weeks, so follow our blog to know when it starts. Not sure whether there will be prizes, but there will be glory.
Which levels didn't load for you? I'll check it out. Sorry about that!
The campaign is certainly short a few thousand levels. It will take time for us to get there, since making good programming levels is a challenge even when you aren't trying to fit them into a cohesive campaign. We'll get there, though. Lots to do!
Oh, which player is your student? Our ten-year-old is American, actually.
We'll keep working on the RAM needs, but yeah, that is just about the lower limit that I would expect to be able to play the game at all currently. We have a lot of work to do, but don't worry, we'll get it running on older and older hardware as we optimize. Thanks for your patience (and your students').
I've started a GitHub issue to track that coordinate selector bug: https://github.com/codecombat/codecombat/issues/1038 – appreciate the bug report!
Interestingly, we have a 10-year-old who hangs out in our dev chat and helps us playtest and simulate. He actually came up with a strategy that did pretty well on the ladders for this latest one, and we'd challenge our other (existing developer) playtesters to c'mon, surely you can beat the 10-year-old!
Looking to the future, we have some ideas to push that younger and younger, too.
Unique contributors since open source launch is strange?
I love this. If you want any art to start off with, CodeCombat has a bunch of vector stuff that's open source and are always adding more: http://codecombat.com/editor/thang
We also have a few music tracks we've commissioned that are Creative Commons if you're interested, like http://codecombat.com/file/music/music_level_5.mp3
Set up some experiments using http://www.quantified-mind.com/ to see whether there's any difference in your cognitive performance when you've been sleeping for 6 hours vs. for 8. Practice the tests a few times, then start a custom experiment with your sleep variable in there. Alternate back and forth between each, maybe a week at a time, for a few weeks–test at the same time of day each day. Hit the Data Minding and see whether there's any perceptible difference in performance.
(Disclaimer: I wanted this to exist, so I helped Yoni build it.)
Yeah, it's going to be awesome when we can do this: https://github.com/codecombat/codecombat/wiki/Summer-Project...
It'll be hard, but not as hard as what we've already done with sandboxing and live-coding user programs, and it'll be truly epic.