What killed Smalltalk could kill Python

[Paul Rubin]

Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> writes:
> Either you pick up a super-restrictive "hey look, you can build a game
> with just point and click" system, which isn't teaching programming at
> all, or you end up getting bogged down in the massive details of what
> it takes to write code.

Code Hero ran into various obstacles and never got finished, but it was
a game whose purpose was to teach the player how to write their own
games using Unity3D.  I saw some early versions and it seemed pretty
accessible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Hero

Heck, there's even a song about learning to program through wanting to
write games, and ending up treating programming as a type of
spirituality (there was an interview with the songwriter explaining
this, but it seems to have gone offline):

lyrics:
http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/01/bnewman/songs/lyrics/Code-Goddess.txt
mp3:
http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/01/bnewman/songs/music/Code-Goddess.mp3


> If someone's unfazed by the "it'll take you years before you can
> actually write a saleable game" consideration,

Wanting to write games is a completely different topic than wanting to
sell them.  It's just like any other creative outlet.  Most people who
teach themselves to juggle do it because juggling is fun, not because
they want to join the circus.