CodeWorld Updates

[Chris Smith]

I'll try to send occasional updates collecting the things going on with CodeWorld.  Let me know if you find these interesting or useful.

In this issue:

• BountySource: earn money hacking on CodeWorld
• Multi-player games
• CodeWorld at BayHac
• Invitation to follow my CodeWorld classes
• Summary of recent changes
• Current ideas and discussion points

BountySource: earn money hacking on CodeWorld

Just a reminder that there are bounties at BountySource that let you make a bit of spending money hacking on CodeWorld.  The starting amounts are small, but I'll add more over time.

Multi-player Games

Joachim and I are continuing to work on implementing multi-player games in CodeWorld.  The most recent changes, come with a huge improvement in usability for some games by trusting client-side timestamps on UI events.  This feature is still unreleased, but I'm pretty excited about it!

CodeWorld at BayHac

If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, mark your calendars for April 7-9, which is BayHac 2017.  I'll be hacking on a CodeWorld-related project (I have a few ideas in mind) that weekend, and I'm also giving a talk on some of the implementation tricks used in the CodeWorld API, as well as my experiences teaching it.  But whether you do something with CodeWorld or not, BayHac sounds like it's going to be awesome, so consider coming!

I'm also exploring doing a CodeWorld presentation at the New York Haskell user Group in the near future.  Details to come!

Invitation to follow my CodeWorld classes

As I just posted, you can follow along with my own CodeWorld classes this semester at http://code.world/parkside.html.  There are two classes: one introductory class, and one follow-up.  I'll be posting video, notes, and other resources as we progress through the semester.

Summary of recent changes

Some of these go a ways back, but this is my first update, so I'll stretch a bit:

• CodeWorld is now using GHC 8.  One of the cool things this gets us is stack traces for runtime errors!
• The Help button in the UI now points to an allanswered.com community.  The previous help content has been rebranded to "Guide"
• I've started work on a GHC proposal to clean up the use of uncurried functions and infix operators.  Details here.

Current ideas and discussion points

Just some thoughts crossing my mind that I'd invite you to think about.

• I'm getting excited about using GHC's stack traces to let students click on parts of their drawings or animations in CodeWorld, and link to the code that draws that shape.  https://github.com/google/codeworld/issues/424
• I'm collecting ideas for lightweight classroom tools that would make teaching with CodeWorld easier, at https://github.com/google/codeworld/issues/429  The goal is to identify ideas with the best "bang for the buck".  I don't want to add too much complexity or implement complex tools that already have other options available, but if there are simple changes that could help a lot, let's find them.  Feedback from those who have taught with CodeWorld would be awesome.
  
• If you're the bikeshedding sort, we're debating the entry point name for the multi-player games API at https://github.com/google/codeworld/issues/428  Feel free to throw your ideas in the hat.