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Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Makes Game For Third Annual Hour of Code (gamasutra.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the you-have-to-start-somewhere dept.

Eloking writes: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Twitter account lit up today with a message all too familiar to many indie devs: Mr. Trudeau has made a video game, and he'd like everyone to play it. It was a cute bit of promotion for Hour of Code, the computer science education event masterminded every year by the Code.org nonprofit. While the Hour of Code websites hosts one-hour tutorials (in 45 languages) for coding all sorts of simple applications, game developers may appreciate that the lion's share appears to be game projects, like the one Trudeau modified into a sort of hockey-themed Breakout variant.

7 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Lovely...with no pressing issues... by Mashiki · · Score: 3, Informative

    And with no pressing issues in Canada, all is safe. With energy costs(from gasoline, electricity to natural gas) that are going through the roof in nearly every province. Never mind that Canada is teetering either on a deflationary spiral or hyperinflation spiral(depending on which way the housing market goes). A housing market so hot that it makes the late 1980's housing market seem like a balmy day, and CHMC(think freddie-fanie) mortgages arrears and foreclosures are increasing. Serious regional unemployment numbers, but believes importing *more* people is a great plan--especially TFW's who could be hired at any job(unlike H1B's which are limited to one area) with wanting to have a population in Canada of 100m in 50 years. His pay-for-play access scandal. A carbon tax that's going to jack the prices of everything up by around 20%, a declining service and manufacturing industry. Rampant debt and overzealous expenditure projects that in the previous government would have every left-wing media publication screaming from the rooftop about how we can't afford it.

    And has decided that he wants to spy on every single Canadian, and pass a bill just like the snoopers charter in the UK. With mandatory decryption, backdoors, subscriber info and retention logging But he's got time to make a video game....so we're all safe.

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    Om, nomnomnom...
    1. Re:Lovely...with no pressing issues... by c · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And with no pressing issues in Canada, all is safe.

      I won't argue that this hour of code stuff isn't a frivolous waste of time, but I do have to say that Trudeau has a couple hundred thousand employees plus an entire Cabinet of supposedly competent politicians who's collective job is to sort that stuff out and generally keep things running.

      If the PM is so critical that all that it all falls apart should he divert his attention elsewhere for a few hours, then we're fucked.

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      Log in or piss off.
    2. Re:Lovely...with no pressing issues... by mark-t · · Score: 3, Informative

      Maryam Monsef, Trudeau's cabinet minister in question, was quite young when her family went to Afghanistan from Iran, and as she grew older, she had forgotten about the relocation and believed that Afghanistan was where she was originally from. Her parents did not correct this matter when she filled in "Afghanistan" as her place of birth on her application form for refugee status, and at the time, this was true to the best of her knowledge. When her mother since admitted to her that she was actually born in Iran, it would certainly have invalidated her otherwise legitimate status as a refugee on a technicality, since there was false information declared on the application form. Trudeau, however, saw the matter differently, saying that people should conflate this situation with "very deliberate acts of omission or dishonesty in trying to get Canadian citizenship through fraudulent declarations or attestations." Monsef could be considered extraordinarily lucky in this regard, however, because it is certainly the case that some people's citizenship has been revoked for the exact same reasons.... and it is inarguably unfair to those other people in that regard, but by all standards in Canada, Monsef herself is *not* an illegal immigrant.

      So, unfair, most certainly... but not against the law. If being unfair were actually illegal, the world would be extraordinarily different from what it is.

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      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    3. Re:Lovely...with no pressing issues... by Curtman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Word of warning to non-Canadians who don't recognise the hyperbole: Alberta is a strange land that desperately wants to be Texas. Its politics produce strange ideas like this. It's clearly something in the water that does this, you see people move there from elsewhere in Canada, and it takes them months sometimes years to become normal again when they come back home. What your experiencing here is someone who has been brainwashed and is suffering a level of butthurt as a result of having a Liberal mayor in Calgary, Socialist government at the provincial level, and a Liberal federal government. Its spectacular to watch.

      Carry on Mashiki. Tell us more about how the last decade of Conservative incompetence didn't create this housing bubble and the current economic instability.

    4. Re:Lovely...with no pressing issues... by a_mari_usque_ad_mare · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is probably the most professionally experienced and accomplished cabinet we've ever had. We have a doctor as health minister, a climate change researcher as environment minster, a former Olympian as minister of sport (granted its a BS ministry, but a good example of this pattern). This isn't to say they'll do a good job, but saying they're unskilled is nonsense.

      Its even more striking to compare this bunch to the Harper gang. His ministers were chosen for being toadies and yes men. What was Joe Oliver's particular expertise? Chris Alexander? Paul Calandra? Maxime Bernier? The current leadership race is such a farce as no one knew what they were doing with Boss Harper gone.

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      The map is not the territory.
  2. Re:Yeah, and I made a car too! by MayeulC · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think that what's the most important here is not how simple or complex coding actually is; but rather getting people to know what it is, and not to fear it.
    I often meet people (students, most of the time), that are frightened by the idea of creating a project bigger than a couple of C files. The trick in this case is to progressively increase the size or the complexity of the projects they are working on, developing their abstraction, design, and overview skills (as well as testing, documentation, etc.). But, of course, you have to start somewhere. And those projects are a perfect opportunity to do so.

    I believe that I more or less started coding the day I started changing .ini files for some game configurations. Then I changed the .bat launchers a bit (in order to load different config files, for example). And increasingly complex, to the Linux kernel and beyond. And in my experience, the same is true for pretty much any field I am interested in (as well as the others).
    To reuse your example, say, Lego cars, can probably (indirectly, as a starter) bring someone into mechanical engineering.

  3. Re:Justin Trudeau, destroying Canada by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Funny

    Why not just elect an underwear model?

    She's first lady.

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    You are welcome on my lawn.