Show HN: Kodable - Programming Fundamentals for Five Year Olds

Show HN: Kodable - Programming Fundamentals for Five Year Olds(surfscore.com)

34 points by grechen 13 years ago | 11 comments

pydave 13 years ago |

It's not clear from the screenshots how the arrows map to the fuzz movement. I'd expect it to be like Google's Turing machine doodle: http://www.google.com/doodles/alan-turings-100th-birthday

But I'm not 5. Maybe kids will want to know what yellow does enough to fiddle around and find out.

Thinking about it some more, I guess the clear background means go until you hit a wall, and the colours mean go until you hit this colour. Better iconography might help ( ->| instead of -> ). I'd expect kids will grasp the meaning of symbols really well, but may be easily frustrated if the symbols don't differ how they expect.

TeMPOraL 13 years ago | |

> I'd expect kids will grasp the meaning of symbols really well, but may be easily frustrated if the symbols don't differ how they expect.

The game is, in principle, just a REPL. Kids will learn quickly by erring and iterating on their mistakes. ;-).

jcl 13 years ago |

Looks cute, but it would be nice if there was more information on how the game worked -- or a gameplay video.

ctdonath 13 years ago | |

It's free to get, quick to download, and easy to start playing. A video is almost a waste of time.

Summary: using symbols, construct a "program" that guides an avatar thru a maze. Complete one maze to access the next, more complicated, maze. It's cute, simple, and (almost) instantly understandable by even a 3 year old.

jcl 13 years ago | | |

Thanks for the description... Some of us do not have iPads. ;)

ctdonath 13 years ago |

Great idea, great start, kids (3 & 4) are excited to play - didn't want to go to bed.

A few bugs, like a misplaced arrow sometimes can't be moved any more.

Please make clear why a level failed! The board just kinda disappears the moment the "program" "crashes".

One big recurring issue with games for toddlers: make it very tolerant of multiple touches. Kids often will touch other fingers to the screen, lean side of hand on it, or put other hand on. Try to identify which touch point is the "real" one and focus on that, ignoring others.

Great job! Looking forward to how far the kids take this. Several times a day they ask for "ghost game" (DragonBox, which starts with a ghost as a logo); they'll be asking for this one too.

Osiris 13 years ago |

I'd love to comment on it if I could actually use it. Please developers, have pity on the Android tablet users. There's only a few million of us (if you include Kindle Fire).

captaintacos 13 years ago | |

I'd like to comment too, but the game doesn't show up in the Japanese AppStore. Please make it available worldwide (even if they are not localized).

Developers: You are all losing sales of expats and people who do speak English outside the US every single time you don't release apps worldwide.

forgueam 13 years ago |

Great app. It's a little buggy, but my four year old caught on quickly and made it through the first 5-6 levels before I had to take it away so she could go to bed. As a developer, this made me a very proud daddy!

wslh 13 years ago |

I find easier to write commands in logo (forward 10) than to write commands in a graphical way. My cousin played adventure games at 4 with the help of a paper with commands that he typed.

notb 13 years ago | |

I agree with you somewhat. Turing machines are difficult to abstract into sensible 'commands' or functions without some kind of compiler or intermediate step. The trouble here is that kids get no exposure to abstraction and functions, which I'd argue is more important and fundamental than conditionals and loops, which are really just specialized functions at heart.