The Hour of Code!

For the Hour of Code this Friday, 12/13/2013, Mrs. Scheffer told us to go through the very organized and detailed flyer she made and pick one of the coding tutorials to learn. Due to my love of games and tendency to play them, I picked to learn programming using the LightBot puzzle game.

The point of LightBot is to program the little robot to light up all the blue squares on the field. Though there are only a few possible controls and the field is small, the game takes more thinking than one might assume. The game is not excessively hard, especially this version that was created specifically for the Hour of Code, because it is more of a beginner tutorial with an added element of fun to it rather than a serious coding assignment or challenge. The levels get progressively harder in each category, so you start off the first few levels learning the basics and then really apply what you learned on the last level of each category.

starting off simple

My experience with LightBot was incredibly positive. I expected the game to be extremely simple, but I found that it took me a few tries and some pretty hefty thinking to get through some of the levels. The first category deals with just the basics of how to make the robot do what you want and how to get it where you want it to go. There was nothing to cover here, just an explanation of the commands and how they work. The second category, the hardest for me, included using procedures and substituting multiple steps as one command in the main sequence. I was doing fine with these until I got to the last level and couldn’t end up figuring it out.

looping using one procedure

Overall the game did a great job introducing coding in a fun and engaging way. I knew a bit about coding prior to playing the game, but I still learned how to use loops and such through this game. LightBot is also a great way to introduce kids to programming. While the game uses programming as a large part of its composition, in essence, it’s still just a game, so it doesn’t necessarily require kids to know anything about programming while giving them a decent introduction to the field. Like other games, children will like or dislike it, so it allows for detection of early interest in programming among children. This is crucial since the programming and computer science fields are so competitive that an early interest in programming would allow children to better prepare as students in high school and excel in the field through projects and personal endeavors to become better candidates for college and, eventually, the job market. After playing through LightBot, I would definitely encourage more game developers to create more programming-oriented games and more parents/teachers to introduce their children/students to these kinds of programming games early on in life. If not for programming purposes, the game is still effective in fostering thinking and problem solving in children which are essential life skills regardless of one’s career choice.

some levels are trickier than they appear

In my opinion, LightBot is definitely a step in the right direction towards a bright future in introductory programming methods.

I did it!