[HN Gopher] Show HN: The Unix Pipe Card Game - teach kids basic ... ___________________________________________________________________ Show HN: The Unix Pipe Card Game - teach kids basic Unix commands Author : throwaway47292 Score : 177 points Date : 2022-10-16 10:57 UTC (12 hours ago) (HTM) web link (punkx.org) (TXT) w3m dump (punkx.org) | EdSchouten wrote: | I'm not saying that this isn't a great way for people to | familiarize themselves with basic Unix shell commands. That said, | why would you want to teach this to _kids_? | [deleted] | WhatIsDukkha wrote: | Kids are people too? | | But yeah this type of thing was always fun for me when I was a | little guy. | throwaway47292 wrote: | Now with everything on the cloud, kids are growing more and | more disconnected with their computers, instead of the kid | making the computer do something, they do some magic sequence | of actions and sometimes things work, sometimes they dont. | | Being able to type a command, give it some input and see its | output, I believe is the most fundamental way to interact with | the computer. | | The basic concepts of files, folders, programs and processes | are getting more and more murky with every new iOS and windows | release, and yet, those are still the building blocks of | everything, they are just hidden by some obscure interfaces and | menus or are just plain inaccessible to the user. | | UNIX Pipes are the most pure and useful way I know of how the | user interacts with the programs and how the programs interact | with each other passing their output to the other program's | input, and I think it illustrates how more complicated things | can be built. | mrashes wrote: | Oh man! Love it. Great Idea! | nixpulvis wrote: | This is brilliant. Every office should have this! | CaptainRefsmat wrote: | My first thought when I saw this was "stocking stuffer". It | sounds a little bit pricey for DIY, though. The Python game | sounded interesting, but my initial impression was that it would | be way too advanced for beginners. Am I missing something? | avsteele wrote: | Nice. Was trying to print out the programming set for my son, but | its too hard to read. | | Can anyone get these to printout larger, and where the grey | comments are less washed out? | throwaway47292 wrote: | You can just generate the tiffs yourself with different colors, | border_color is the color of the border and the comments | https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids/blob/8d14a24... | | (if you are talking about the programming time game) | dlg wrote: | Is the creator thinking of doing another printing? If not can | someone recommend a service that will print a high quality card | deck given the PDF? | throwaway47292 wrote: | I print with some professional card printing companies, the | pricing goes something like 10 decks, 500$, 50 decks 800$, 100 | decks 1200$, and 300 decks 1500$ and then it continues to drop | | Since I printed only 50, I think the price is too high, so I | would rather to give them for free than to charge unreasonable | price. If you are willing to pay the shipping cost send me an | email to b0000@fastmail.com, I still have few left. | OakNinja wrote: | Maybe you could run all the decks as a kit on kickstarter? | | I would love to buy all of them as a set, and I believe a lot | of others would as well. | throwaway47292 wrote: | I am halfway done with the C deck, as we are switching to C | soon, and I will setup a kickstarter after, should be done | around December. | | I want her to know why x[3] and 3[x] are the same thing. | int x[3]; 2[x] = 5; printf("%d %d\n", | 2[x], x[2]) | | A lot of people struggle with x = 5 | y = 6 y = x x = 7 | print(y) | | and x = [1,2] y = [3,4] | y = x x.append(5) print(y) | | There is something magical in understanding how the | computer uses its memory, its almost as if you walk out of | a mist. | | I think it will be very valuable to have a set of 4 decks: | python, machine code, unix pipes and C, so that the decks | compliment each other. In the machine code deck there are | few cards that have pointers (e.g. | https://punkx.org/4917/play.html#43), and they can be used | to help with the C deck for example. | | Then its LISP. | pessimizer wrote: | You can get the 50 deck rate for even a single deck (and | there are often coupon codes) at | https://www.printerstudio.com/unique-ideas/blank-playing- | car... or https://www.artscow.com/photo-gifts/playingcards | | Also, if you're trying to give this away, they both allow you | to share a link to your design so other people can buy the | cards direct. | | ---- | | edit: the sites may seem cheezy, but they're probably | responsible for 95% of prototype card decks that professional | designers print. | | For other excellent non-Chinese, Buy America options, there | are https://www.printplaygames.com/product- | category/prototypes/c... , | https://www.thegamecrafter.com/make/pricing#Cards and | https://www.drivethrucards.com/joincards.php | rabf wrote: | A cheap laser engraver could work well here. | Rebelgecko wrote: | Would you need 2layered paper, with a different color | underneath? Or would engraving the words directly onto card | stock be legible? | patrickdavey wrote: | I would love a Kickstarter (or something similar) with this. | Would totally buy a nice set. | jdthedisciple wrote: | Looks nice, though my guess is it would be more appealing to kids | if it used more color, a bigger font size and a more "fun" font | family like Comic Sans perhaps. | | Nice work though, would definitely consider this for my own kids. | ape4 wrote: | And a mascot - Pipey | blue1 wrote: | Please no. Doh't feed bad typography to kids. | | (When I was a kid, I had access to good design examples. I | hated fonts "for kids". Also, because the essence of play is | simulation, and childish fonts ruin the game) | geraldwhen wrote: | Comic sans black on white is more readable than most copy | produced in modern web products. | | Designers love grey on grey. I'll take comic sans any day. | zasdffaa wrote: | Font and font contrast are entirely orthogonal. | flobosg wrote: | Are they? Font contrast is a multifaceted concept that | encompasses not only color but other properties as well. | For instance, stroke weight and its modulation, which are | inherent to a typeface. | zasdffaa wrote: | Can you give a visual example where they're not? (other | than anti-aliasing round the edges) | flobosg wrote: | See https://medium.com/alex-couch-s-portfolio/type- | hierarchy-and... for some of them. The "blurry eye test" | mentioned there is related to the typographical term of | _color_ (see | https://bigelowandholmes.typepad.com/bigelow- | holmes/2015/04/... and | https://practicaltypography.com/color.html) which is | affected, among other things, by the actual shape of the | glyphs. Font contrast has little to do, if anything at | all, with anti-aliasing. | SamBam wrote: | To be fair, though, the first comment that referred to | contrast was clearly talking only about color, and had | nothing to do with "topography contrast." | | The original comment was | | > Designers love grey on grey. I'll take comic sans any | day. | | These _are_ two orthogonal features. It 's like saying | "fashion today is really into high waists, but I'll take | denim any day." | flobosg wrote: | > the first comment (...) was clearly talking only about | color | | That comment explicitly mentions a typeface (Comic Sans). | geraldwhen wrote: | They're not. The people asking for specific font faces | for brand or accessibility reasons are the same people | who design apps and websites with text I can't read. | | In this case, click the post link. It's black text on a | white background. Comic sans would work fine, and it | would be better than a monospaced font added for some | nostalgia for a time when fonts could not be kerned. | zasdffaa wrote: | I see. You're clearly knowledgeable in this area and my | naively used terminology has misled you. In terms of | contrast I'm talking about the simple stuff "Contrast is | the difference in luminance..." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrast_(vision) whereas | you're talking of something typographical I was unaware | of. Sorry for the confusion. | flobosg wrote: | In the end, font contrast also involves the simple stuff, | but the difference in perceived luminance depends on more | than just foreground and background colors. | lupire wrote: | Kids don't like comics fonts? | Shared404 wrote: | Not when they'ee out of place. | | Any time I've worked with kids older than ~8, they'll | gravitate away from comic or obviously "kid focused" fonts, | and more towards "cool" fonts. | layer8 wrote: | While I wouldn't advocate for Comic Sans, monospace isn't | exactly good typography either. | throwamon wrote: | > When I was a kid, ... I hated fonts "for kids" | | So you were a snob since you were a child. Got it. | | Please stop gatekeeping subjective matters. | Zhyl wrote: | There's a typo on the instructions page. The example has 'rises' | but the rest of the explanation uses 'raises' | | I love this as a concept, though. | | I think if I were to expand this I'd maybe have pre-defined | strings for the greps, cards with results on, number pre-selected | etc. This makes it more of a 'find the card' or 'matching' game | than a problem solving game, but it would make it more kids-card- | gamey | loonster wrote: | You should add this game to boardgamegeek. They will also host | the files for you if you want. | pluc wrote: | Doesn't seem to be a problem for OP since the files are | available on GitHub [1] but they choose to leave downloads up | on their domain. | | 1: https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for- | kids/tree/master/... | throwaway47292 wrote: | I do that so there is no tracking, I want people to be able | to download the pdfs without microsoft's knowledge :) | ajot wrote: | Is there any way you could/would change the license from ND to | something else allowing derivatives? I would love to see | translations of these! | throwaway47292 wrote: | Sorry, I copied ND and NC by mistake, I just pushed | https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids/commit/8d14a... | to move to CC-BY-4.0 (removing NC and NC) | wodenokoto wrote: | I love Unix pipes and I love the immense computational power you | can achieve through streaming pipelines. You hear stories of | people processing terabytes of data faster and cheaper than a | distributed cloud solution, by the virtue of Unix pies[1]. | | But I don't really see them in any other environment. I can't | think of anything that uses something similar except for big, | distributed data processing pipelines like Apache Beam. | | Where's the Python with streaming pipelines? | | [1] https://livefreeordichotomize.com/posts/2019-06-04-using- | awk... | [deleted] | Zhyl wrote: | This is one of the things that I think Perl (still) does really | well. It has flags to allow for command-like one liners and has | built in things (like the diamond operator) that make it very | quick and easy to write 'filter' scripts that read STDIN and | print to STDOUT. | | Python can do these things, but they aren't very pythonic and | they don't feel as natural/intuitive. | 1MachineElf wrote: | The photo at the bottom appears to be some small ergonomic | keyboard (maybe an Atreus?) built into stained wood along with a | screen. Perhaps it is a cyberdeck? Curious to know more. | throwaway47292 wrote: | Ah! I didnt mean to show it off, just my desk is a mess.. | | Yea its a cyberdeck I am building with hardwired Atreus | directly connected to pi zero gpios and using libuinput to make | a software keyboard, which works amazing btw. | | I am making it to init directly into getty without login (with | busybox init), so it boots directly in usable /bin/bash in only | 2-3 seconds, and all the available programs are simple python | programs (ls, cp, mv, a basic line editor, touchtyping game, | hangman etc) and the keyboard itself is a simple python program | that basically scans the matrix and emits events to uinput. The | frame is from plywood. | | And I am trying to make it like a 'scavenger hunt' experience | for my daughter, I will put special codes in various places in | the programs or on the file system with different difficulty, | and I can challenge her to find them. | | The goal is to have < 50$ scavenger hunt computer kit (thats | why I cant afford teensy or something) | | This is just the prototype to see how it feels to write code | using line editor, and also to test the effect of thinking of | the keyboard as a program with a nested for loop, on her | thinking about 'what happens when you press a key' | for r in rows: send(r, 1) for c in | cols: v = read(c) if v == 1: | # (r,c) is pressed send(r, 0) | | I just uploaded those to show you how it looks, but again, its | just to test the software and the screens size: | | https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids/blob/master/... | https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for-kids/blob/master/... | falcor84 wrote: | Looks a bit simulator to the online Unix Game, which I really | like: | | https://www.unixgame.io/unix50 | throwaway47292 wrote: | This is amazing! Thanks for sharing, I will try it with my | daughter. | petespeed wrote: | More from the author: https://github.com/jackdoe/programming-for- | kids ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-10-16 23:00 UTC)