Learning to program by playing
Do you want to learn to program, but don’t know how to start? The classic web tutorials seems to be boring for you?
Well, CodeCombat is your answer. But, what’s CodeCombat? Like it announces in its homepage is a game that teaches coding while you play a funny online old school Role Playing Game with dungeons, enemys, weapons, experience, etc.
The teaching system is based on repetition, every action your Hero performs in the game is a code line, so, you’ll aquire knowledge without even notice it. For example, if you want to move your characther right in a normal game you’ll press right arrow, but here you have to write the correct statement: this.moveRight( ): or even the right coordinates like this.moveXY(32, 28);. You don’t need to have previous experience, but the game is suggested for students aged nine and up.
When you start playing you have to choose the language you want to learn, there are several options like Python or Javascript, and you’ll learn the most important foundation skills like formal syntax, conditional logic and variables. Like every game, while you advance it gets more and more difficult. Every level has an objective and some of them has more than one solution, the good thing is that everytime you win a level you can play it again to find another solution or even see another solution suggested.
But the best thing is CodeCombat is free and opensource, so, anyone with a computer and an internet connection can play and even contribute with the game, in fact, they encourage you to join the team and help to make it better. So, the game is always expanding and getting new challenging levels, and even though it has been done for English speakers, you can choose from a long list of languages, but be patient, because some of them are not fully translated, yet. But is one of the areas you can contribute.
Some negative aspects could be sometimes it has some Lag and turns to be a bit slow, or you can find it a bit childish. And there are some levels that you must pay a subscription to play them, but the team assures that free levels cover all the things you should learn and premium content is for more training and more fun. The monthly subscription cost USD 9,99 and you can cancel it anytime.
So, if you want to learn to program and you like RPG games, and even if you want to experience a different way of learning, CodeCombat is for you.