Idea: Project Lovechild

[Robin]

(Sory if this project was intended to be serious)

Project is serious, topic not really. This is still the CLUB.

Well if someone would help me than it would get polished a lot faster.

Any Flashers around? (I only Flash in a 30-day period when I was 12. )

[Jasoco]

Must resist making joke. Must resist making joke.

[snake]

Any Flashers around? (I only Flash in a 30-day period when I was 12. )

Well I knew nothing about Flash when i started the project myself so i had to stare at the adobe docs for endless hours.
If someone would be interested I could teach him the basics so he had not to learn it the hard way himself and I have kept most of the code in Lua so there are no Flash skills required.
But wrong Thread anyway.

[zachwlewis]

I Flash for a living. Too much on my plate to take on side projects, though.

[snake]

I Flash for a living. Too much on my plate to take on side projects, though.

I got already depressed from staring at the Flash API too long but Flash for a living, that must be the real horror!
It could help me a lot knowing someone whom a i can ask about Flash related stuff so i might take the opportunity if i see you on irc.

[willurd]

I could totally see using the browser-based LOVE being useful as well, so kids can just code and play without having to figure out all the packaging and stuff.

For sure. Whether or not we use the browser LOVE thing, something like http://tryruby.org/ would totally be awesome for the site. We could make a browser lua/LOVE widget and then throw a bunch of these interactive tutorials up for various things. I personally found tryruby an excellent resource when I was diving into ruby. The conversational tone along with the interactivity of it (it's like the lua repl, but with someone guiding you along the way, telling you what you can do) made it not such a drag to use.

For example, starting off an interactive tutorial on tables might look something like this:

Code: Select all

-- step one
print "By now you've hopefully learned about Lua's various types, like numbers and strings."
print "Now we're going to learn about Lua's only data structure, the table."
print "In Lua, we use tables for everything. Let's see what we mean by that."
repeat
  print "Type 't = {}' and hit enter."
  wait for input...
until type(t) == "table"

-- step two
print "The variable 't' now holds a table. You can use this variable to store other values, even other tables."
print "Let's give the table some values."
print "You can make a table hold a value like this: 'table.insert(<your table>, <your value>)'
print "table.insert() is a function that expects a table as its first value, and pretty much anything else as its second value."
repeat
  print "Try something like this a few times: table.insert(t, <some value>). For example: table.insert(t, "hello") or table.insert(t, 47)."
until #t > 1

-- etc

You print some stuff out, giving the user information in bits and pieces, and then letting them immediately do (that's the key) what you're showing them. Then you wait for some state to change (like, you check and make sure they actually did what you're asking them to do), then you go on with the tutorial.

[willurd]

I Flash for a living. Too much on my plate to take on side projects, though.

I Flex for a living. I couldn't imagine working in Flash everyday. Can't stand it. It's just something about the timeline that makes me want to punch somebody, usually the poor soul who is sitting next to me.

[willurd]

One more idea before I go to sleep.

I was going to start this off by saying "If we're going to be targeting children with this website then...", then I realized that this would work for everybody. In fact it does work. It's all around us: It would both help the site and help the users/learners if we incorporated a point system into the site, and made it social.

• You login to the site. You read a tutorial. You answer a few questions and get points for "completing" that tutorial.
• You head over to an interactive tutorial (see my idea above), go through the whole thing (or part of it even), and because the whole time it's making sure you're actually doing what the tutorial is talking about, once you finish it you automatically get points (or you get partial credit if you bail out, maybe).
• Let's say we also implement some sort of simple q/a feature on the site, like yahoo answers. You get points for asking questions, points for answering questions, and points when a question you asked gets ranked.
• You get extra points, or a badge or "achievement" or something, if you complete at least one tutorial every day for a week.
• Same thing as above but for a month, with a better prize (bigger/better badge, tons of points).
• Maybe as you're browsing the site an optional "pop quiz" might show up randomly on the page somewhere and test you on information from quizzes you've already taken and tutorials you've already completed.
• You can take "exams" (or whatever you want to call them) that if you pass you get bumped up to the next level (I'm a level 8 LOVEer!).

Really, it's not the points so much that matter. The points are a form of feedback. Feedback that you're learning. Feedback that you now have a certain level of knowledge in this thing you're trying to learn. It's the feedback that's important.

Also, when you make it social (the ranking feature for example, or by displaying a person's points wherever you display their badge), you then encourage people to participate, because now they have something they can show off (whether they want to admit it or not, everyone loves having a high rank next to their name).

This is what sites like stackoverflow.com, most of the games on facebook, xbox live points/achievements, etc, etc, etc are all about.

All in all, my point for suggesting this is to encourage people to get on the site and actually participate, actually learn. Give them a reason to keep coming back.

[zachwlewis]

I Flash for a living. Too much on my plate to take on side projects, though.

I Flex for a living. I couldn't imagine working in Flash everyday. Can't stand it. It's just something about the timeline that makes me want to punch somebody, usually the poor soul who is sitting next to me.

I actually use ActionScript and UnrealScript to develop and implement UI for video games. I never touch the timeline. It's dumb.

I was going to start this off by saying "If we're going to be targeting children with this website then...", then I realized that this would work for everybody. In fact it does work. It's all around us: It would both help the site and help the users/learners if we incorporated a point system into the site, and made it social.

I agree, but I think the first thing to do is to get some stuff written and put it out there. Then, we can always "build" on the community, but without content, there's no community.

[Robin]

Alright, I put op a poll.

I really hope the community will support this with actions and not just words. This thing won't work as a one-man mission.