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bobbylox

189 karma · joined March 11, 2008

Designer of Educational Games based in Chicago

meet.hn/city/us-Chicago

Socials:

- bsky.app/profile/bobbylox.bsky.social

- linkedin.com/in/bobbylox

Interests:

Education, Gaming

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submissionscomments
bobbylox··on How to turn anything into a router
Try it with this! https://www.dewalt.com/en-us/product/dwp611pk/dewalt-1-14-hp...
bobbylox··on Bobby's Rules for Brainstorming
These rules have been very helpful to me the last few years. I had to cobble them together the hard way—with lots of frustration, hurt feelings, and sub-par solutions left in my wake. I hope you can avoid all that and, along with a group you trust, find the best ways past all your problems.
bobbylox··on Too Many Walts and not enough Roys
Roy O. Disney was just as much a part of Disney's success as Walt, but while many people have molded themselves in Walt's image, the Roys are few and far between.
bobbylox··on Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists
But they wouldn't have wanted this particular thing if the AI hadn't told them to.
bobbylox··on Nobody cares
Weird timing to be praising Elon Musk's propensity to care deeply (for future internet readers, he recently gave a nazi salute during a Donald Trump rally).
bobbylox··on Nobody cares
There are many artists whose work was 'objectively' (that is, by consensus) bad until later when it became objectively good.
bobbylox··on Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?
My wife and I built our own Laser Maze for our front yard so kids could try it out on Halloween. https://www.tiktok.com/@bobbylox/video/7163380326008425770
bobbylox··on Mammals can absorb oxygen through their intestines
brb submitting the "Diving Suppository" to YC
bobbylox··on Ask HN: What do you do with your Raspberry Pi?
I used it to make a game about High-Fiving, and I got to show it at GDC! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RGjEkkfuwA
bobbylox··on What is Life? by Erwin Schrödinger (1944) [pdf]
A miserable pile of organic molecules. But enough talk...Have at you!
bobbylox··on Launch HN: Plasticity (YC S17) – APIs for human-like natural language interfaces
Obama was the 44th (really 43rd if you count by people instead of presidencies) President.
bobbylox··on Ask HN: What're the best-designed things you've ever used?
Great Christopher Alexander Reference
bobbylox··on Netflix Infinite Runner
Netflix IPs would make some great worlds for larger games, actually. I can imagine a Telltale-style narrative adventure set in the Womens Prison of 'Orange is the New Black' or an action horror game where you play as Eleven, trapped in the Upside Down. Even their animated properties - Knights of Sidonia, Ajin, and Voltron - would be awesome worlds for players to experience. Netflix, if you're reading, hit up the game studio I design for -- contact@phosphorgames.com
bobbylox··on Microsoft is using Minecraft to vie for kids’ brain space and schools’ dollars
As someone making an educational game to teach programming ( http://codemancergame.com ) I say the more the merrier! A rising tide lifts all boats.
bobbylox··on Jessica Livingston: How to Build the Future
But they did get jobs. They got jobs at a humorous cereal box company they founded.
bobbylox··on Jessica Livingston: How to Build the Future
I think there needs to be a moratorium on that AirBnB political cereal box story. "The most important thing to do is to focus on your business, but also it's cool if you spend time on a random side business," is a big mixed message.
bobbylox··on Why should children program? A review of Seymour Papert's Mindstorms
Thank you!
bobbylox··on Why should children program? A review of Seymour Papert's Mindstorms
Yes, in a roundabout way -- feeding arguments sets the variables on that page.
bobbylox··on Why should children program? A review of Seymour Papert's Mindstorms
Yes, I find that to be the case more often than not: boys don't care about the gender of their avatar. Girls do.

Codemancer has variables and conditionals, and uses them for various things. Some of the game is very tactical, so conditionals are used to deal with enemies who have semi-random behaviour. There are also levels that take place "in the dark" (with a limited field of view).

Yes, "code your way to the target" games have become somewhat of a genre. I think the story is one source of differentiation, as is the programming interface -- Codemancer has no numbers greater than 5 (arithmetic is mod 6), to keep the game from getting math-heavy. All the functions are symbolic, so there's no reading required.

In Codemancer user-defined functions are "pages" in your spell book. Players can call other pages, and even the page they're on (this is much later in the game). You can also Cast a page onto an enemy who has been weakened. We've seen that kids are pretty comfortable with the idiom of "Pages."

bobbylox··on Why should children program? A review of Seymour Papert's Mindstorms
If you find this essay compelling, you might be interested in the game I'm working on, Codemancer ( http://codemancergame.com/ ). A game that teaches programming, with a compelling story about a girl on a journey to rescue her Father. Coming this Fall to Mac, PC and Tablets.

I tried to hew closely to the principles of Constructionism which were pioneered by Papert, and to make the game accessible to kids who wouldn't normally be interested in programming.

bobbylox··on Ask HN: Has technology benefited the classroom?
Here's a relevant article that just came up in my twitter feed: http://www.eschoolnews.com/2016/02/15/what-does-research-rea...
bobbylox··on The Bug in the Physical Building
If the author is here, there's a typo: "catastrophy" should be "catastrophe."
bobbylox··on The Tesla 3 and “Shit Talkers” Like Me
The author doesn't seem to realize that electric power produced by even the dirtiest coal power plant is far less harmful (in terms of CO2 and particulates) than a gasoline engine per mile travelled.
bobbylox··on Apply HN: Qbix, Inc Aims to Do for Social What Bitcoin Did for Money
From an end-user perspective, what advantage do you feel decentralization provides?
bobbylox··on Apply HN: Placewire
It seems as though you know that hyperlocal businesses have not done well in the past. What is the unique thing you bring to the table that might save you from their fate?
bobbylox··on An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant
I'm not sure the TSA app is weighted 50/50
bobbylox··on Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
I've thought about writing an "Another World"-style game engine many times myself.
bobbylox··on Why programming is a good medium for expressing poorly understood ideas (1967)
"We must not fall into anthropomorphic ways of thinking about machines; they do only what their programs say; they can't be original or creative." In debunking this fallacy, I would have thought that the "Computers Are More Flexible Than You Think" argument wold only need to go halfway, and "Brains Are Less Flexible Than We Think" could take us the rest of the way there. Of course, in 1967 I imagine the support for the second argument was much thinner than it is now.
bobbylox··on GraphQL: A data query language
Why invent syntax when you can specify the queries in JSON, too? MQL did it, and it was amazing: http://wiki.freebase.com/images/e/e0/MQLcheatsheet-081208.pd...
bobbylox··on Ask HN: The most interesting current approaches to teaching programming?
I wrote this article a while ago to point out some games-based approaches: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RobLockhart/20130905/199667/G...

Since then, even more have cropped up: Code Combat: https://codecombat.com/ Empire of Code: http://www.checkio.org/blog/empire-code-space-strategy-game-... Code Kingdoms: http://codekingdoms.com/ Taken Charge: https://takenchargegame.com/ ComputerCraftEdu (Minecraft Mod) : http://computercraftedu.com/

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