Must be binary…

Before the cruel events on October 7th and the insane devastation that followed, I didn’t realize how deeply messed up the western idea of foreign policy in the Middle East really is. Before October 7th, I knew about colonialism, I knew about the war on terror and its devastating consequences for countries in that region. I knew about things like the insane death toll in the Mediterranean Sea, where innocent people in need are just getting systematically crushed by the EU’s border apparatus and the right-wing idea of “securing borders” and “not letting the bad ones in”. I knew about it and understood it as inhumane right-wing or neoliberal ideas that align with the interests of those who can really profit from it. The oil industry, weapons manufacturers, etc… and the politicians who are in their pockets or benefit from spreading fear and hate.

For me, these topics were always something that the progressive left and even many liberal or apolitical people can understand as senseless cruelty. Seeing the news coverage after October 7th and diving deeper into the details of that conflict, I was absolutely dumbfounded, that even some of the progressive news-outlets I follow are avoiding talking about Israels war crimes while repeating the propaganda of Zionist organizations or the Israeli state. My country has defended Israels actions in the international court, and there are quite a few people agreeing with that decision. Quite a few people that I would otherwise consider reasonable and knowledgeable. I have read newspapers that hold themselves to “high journalistic standards” who call peaceful student groups antisemitic and Nazi-aligned. Groups that were advocating for humanity, a ceasefire and a one-state-solution, and have now shut down any kind of public protest because of the hate that came their way.

Not far from where I live, there was a concentration camp and less than a hundred years ago my country had a fascist tyrant as its leader and plenty of accomplices who helped him with his ethnic cleansing campaign. We are not that far removed from this fascism, from treating people with other ethnic backgrounds like something you can just exploit to drown out in the Mediterranean Sea. From supporting the idea of a pure religious ethnostate having the right to slaughter “uncivilized” people that are in the way. From being ignorant enough to whitewash those who fought against apartheid while jailing those who are opposing it now.

Those are just technical details. Misinformation about the IDF-Hamas war is so insane, you can’t even look at “reputable” mainstream media outlets without getting ahistorical analysis, zionism or antisemitism. We are witnessing ethnic cleansing and cruel war crimes here because all the parties who had the possibility to prevent this decided not to. Instead of focussing on the historical context and the steps necessary to deescalate this conflict, the media is focussing on the question of which acts of violence are justified and which aren’t.

Mike Lindell is trying really hard to convince us that we are all taking part in a Mockumentary, and he’s just a paid actor who is doing a comedic bit. The only thing that’s missing for me in this video is the intro from The Office and the camera panning to Jim every now and then, who looks like he’s trying hard not to laugh.

I think every school in the USA needs a geostationary satellite with a high-powered laser so that any school shooter can be vaporized at the speed of light. Without high-precision orbital strike capability, the USA won’t be able to solve their gun problem… I mean, what else could you possibly do to combat gun violence… 🤔

I’m glad you liked the idea of the world building twist, and I think I agree with everything else you said as well. Thanks for the feedback!

This sounds a bit like hamster simulator, which we used in high school in our “programming” class, the site is in German, but you might the idea. But I can absolutely see how you can make this more compelling.

Deutsch wäre jetzt kein Problem für mich und ich glaube, ich erinnere mich sogar daran, das auch mal im IT Unterricht gehabt zu haben. Leider war die Lehrerin damals 'ne Katastrophe und ich hab’ das meiste von damals wohl schon ausgeblendet 😅

Thanks for the suggestion! I’ll look into it when I find some time.

Personally, and I’m going to be completely honest and frank with you, I don’t think I would play it, (though I’m definitely not the target market), but also, it’s not likely that I would recommend it to someone who wants to learn to code either.

Usually when people want to learn to code, it’s because they have some end goal in mind - they want to make an app, game, website, they want to get a job as a developer, data analyst, QA, etc. or they have something in particular which interests them - such as machine learning, embedded design, blockchain (yes, I know it’s a scam), digital music/art, etc. - and based on what they want to do, I’d recommend them some very different pathways, and it’s very unlikely that your game would be the best use of their time, to be honest.

I appreciate the honesty, and I see your point about the game not appealing to a lot of the target audience. Your suggestion with the platform-first approach and the monetization options sound like a good idea, but it is not the direction I’d want to take. I definitely have to think about it more and figure out, how to address the points you made while still pursuing a project I fell invested in.

I haven’t played any of these games before, but if a find enough time, I’ll look into them. Thanks for the suggestions!

Building something in-game and extending the world with coding is an interesting perspective. I haven’t thought about it this way before. Instead, I always thought about solving programming tasks and, therefore, solving some issue in-game. I’d have to think about this more and see if I could incorporate that idea. Thanks for the suggestion!

I think your idea is interesting, but based on the examples I’ve listed, which I must admit is not a huge sample, most of them are played in a sort of GUI experience sort of way. I think it would be very, very difficult to translate the core concepts of programming to a side scroller.

Unfortunately, I haven’t played any of these games, but I have scrolled through that category myself to see what’s out there. I agree with you, that a side scroller is probably not the best option to introduce programming concepts from a game-mechanic perspective. I think didn’t really communicate well, that the way I envision my game differs a bit from these approaches. I don’t actually want to focus on specialized in-game mechanics that help to visualize algorithms or programming concepts. Instead, the game is meant to be a very mechanically trivial, story focussed frontend, that makes achieving the programming tasks more exciting.

Hmm… so thats why they say, Apple is a religion 🤔

You could use n8n for that. Just create a flow that uses the telegram integration

Despite the name, audiobookshelf recently also added e-book support. It is still in development but (at least for me) is at a point where I’ve abandoned kavita and am now using it for both my audio, and e-books.

I can’t wait to learn more about the GPU. I really hope it’ll be able to run CUDA.

Hopefully, they fix their camera API so that GCam works properly this time. Being stuck with the stock photo app was the only downside of version 4 imo.

I’m going to sound cynical here so if you don’t want to be confronted with negative content, please skip this one…

I second this but would recommend n8n instead, since you can self-host it and you’re not dependent on another online service.

There are a many approaches to implementing OOP in C. Since C doesn’t give you any language constructs to implement this out of the box, it’s up to you to do it in a consistent and understandable manner. Since there is no definite way to do it, let me just give you an example of how I would translate a Python file, and you can decide how you implement it from there:

--------------
class Parent:
    def __init__(self, param1: str, param2: int):
        self.__param1 = param1
        self.__param2 = param2
    def __private_method(self):
        print("private method")
    def public_method(self):
        print("public method")
    @staticmethod
    def static_method():
        print("static method")
    @property
    def param1(self):
        return self.__param1

class Child(Parent):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__("param1", 2)
--------------

I would split the C code for this into header and source files:

(header.h)

--------------
#pragma once

/// Parent Class ///
typedef struct Parent_obj {
    char* param1
    unsigned int param1_len
    int param2
} Parent_obj_t;
void Parent_init(Parent_obj_t* self, char* param1, unsigned int param1_len, int param2);
void Parent_public_method(Parent_obj_t* self);
void Parent_static_method();
void Parent_param1(Parent_obj_t* self, char* out, unsigned int max_len); // property method with upper bound string length
void Parent_del(Parent_obj_t* self); // destruct object (similar to __del__() in python)

/// Child Class ///
typedef struct Child_obj {
    Parent_hidden_state_t* super
    char* param
    unsigned int param_len
} Child_obj_t
void Child_init(Child_obj_t* self, Parent_obj_t* super);
void Child_del(Child_obj_t* self);
--------------

(source.c)

--------------
#include "header.h"

/// Parent Class ///
// private methods
void Parent_private_method(Parent_obj_t* self){...} // not visible in the header file
// public methods
void Parent_init(Parent_obj_t* self, char* param1, unsigned int param1_len, int param2){...}
void Parent_public_method(Parent_obj_t* self){...}
void Parent_static_method(){...}
void Parent_param1(Parent_obj_t* self, char* out, unsigned int max_len){...}
void Parent_del(Parent_obj_t* self){...}

/// Child Class ///
// public methods
void Child_init(Child_obj_t* self, Parent_obj_t* super){...}
void Child_del(Child_obj_t* self){...}
--------------

Modules and namespaces can be modeled using folders and prefixing your structs and functions.