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'CodeSpells' Video Game Teaches Children Java Programming

Posted by samzenpus on from the get-in-upstairs-and-play-your-games dept.

CyberSlugGump writes "Computer scientists at UC San Diego have developed a 3D first-person video game designed to teach young students Java programming. In CodeSpells, a wizard must help a land of gnomes by writing spells in Java. Simple quests teach main Java components such as conditional and loop statements. Research presented March 8 at the 2013 SIGCSE Technical Symposium indicate that a test group of 40 girls aged 10-12 mastered many programming concepts in just one hour of playing."

5 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. not a complete success by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    38 of the 40 girls in the test group complained that, once they were written in Java, the spells took forever to execute.

  2. Re:Doomed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    That's why Java has builtin garbage collection, DUH!

  3. Re:had a similar idea some time ago. by exploder · · Score: 3, Funny

    Battlegrounds in World of Warcraft were kind of awesome back before they (quite correctly, I guess) put all sorts of restrictions on what kinds of things could be scripted. I used to *own* the level-19 battlegrounds with a warlock and an addon I wrote to keep track of enemy targets and optimally distribute my various curses and afflictions. I just ran around mashing the spacebar like crazy, because among the few restrictions was that every action had to be tied to a hardware event.

    I also earned 10,000 gold in the auction house with another addon of mine that helped me find and relist underpriced stuff. At that time, 10K gold was an eye-wateringly large sum. It's probably pocket change now...I've been out five years.

    Man, I really did feel like a wizard with arcane and hidden knowledge. It was great. I've often wished for a game where programming was the way you do magic, but only that once have I gotten it. I guess a key part of the experience was that hardly anyone else could do it, or knew how I was doing it, which is how magic is often imagined to be.

    --
    Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
  4. Re:How about Python or something? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Also, you said "your" instead of "you're"; if you are confused by this, these words are used correctly here: "you're a moron, your opinion doesn't count."

  5. I feel... by HaZardman27 · · Score: 3, Funny

    I feel like my signature is very relevant today.

    --
    Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.