TechTalk

Learning to program can be a very abstract and frustrating affair, traditionally a very narrow link existed between programming and mathematics, at some universities programming courses fall under mathematics departments. It can be difficult for some people to learn to program. I have found that there is an instant when someone just “gets it”. To program a simple “hello world” program is easy it; it can be copied and pasted and it will work but to understand the underlying concepts and the inner workings is an entirely different mater. Concepts like Object Orientation are very difficult to grasp at first, because usually no frame of reference exists.

This all does not have to be true, you see there are many “Fun” ways you can learn to program, enter RoboCode…

What is roboCode?

Ill leave it to Wikipedia to explain:

“Robocode is an Open Source educational game started by Mathew Nelson (originally provided by IBM). Currently contributions are being made by various people; officially Flemming N. Larsen is working on Robocode to keep it current and fix the bugs. The game is designed to help people learn to program in Java and enjoy the experience. It is very easy to start - a simple robot can be written in just a few minutes - but perfecting a bot can take months or more.”

I am addictaed to RoboCode…

It is so much fun trying to develop a robot which you will battle with. In Robocode, you pre-program an autonomous Robot tank, which sole purpose is to blow up the other tanks on the battlefield! There are also team modes and different categories in which you can compete in, which enforces a limit on the size of your robot, not physical size but the size of the control program you programmed! Of course you don’t have to compete in any tournaments, you can just learn to program in Java by programming your own Robot! Tweak it to be better, add strategies to outsmart your opponents, it takes only a couple of minutes to get a basic Robot to work, but it can take months to get develop an excellent robot, which actually wins battles!

I first discovered the Opensource RoboCode project when I did research for an assignment I had to do for varsity. I immediately wanted to start to code a robot!

RoboCode, is not only intended for the would-be programmer, but also for experienced programmers who wants a fun new way to apply their learned trade! I am in the process of trying to start an online league, keep an eye out for that! The nice thing about robocode is that the robots can be safely distributed over the internet, because all robots get compiled into bytecode, and the robocode simulator runs in a sandbox. If you did not understand the above statement, don’t worry it just says that you can program your robot and give it to someone else to play against in a safe manner…

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