Programming as a game, my thoughts on CheckIO

So I am a python dev and I love podcasts, I listen to podcasts from different topics, from geo-politics to sexuality, to comedy. However one of the topics is development, and Programming is one of my favorites. *Talk Python to me* is a great podcast, and I have some comments about it.

To listen to the show please checkout their recording at talk python to me.

So Python is great for development of course, and now talking about game programming. Alex from CheckIO created a game development company that base it's development on python.

First thing that confused me is that Alex was coding in Perl, which is pretty odd in what I supposed is more than the 90s. Probably the early 2000's but coding for a bank in Perl seems odd. Most Banks use Java, or some corporate language, but mabye is just a legacy system from the 80s-90s.

Anyway I appreciate Alex enthusiasm on Python, and one of the first biggest testimonies, is to try to solve a problem for 5 hours, and then solve it and then comment it to other developer and seen other solutions. I have been there, but haven't seen it that way. Usually I become lazy and just post my question on SO and wait from a solution, bu this doesn't burn enough brain cells. I should do his method more.

Programming is basically problem solving, so having the patience, the research skills and the way to overcome the problems.

The biggest issue is how this game will teach you to code, and solve problems. They have a web editor but you can also have a web-plugin to sync to an editor. I think that's awesome. This episode made me just want to go to that game, the mission and island structure and other challenges about learning to code through gaming.

The other is the solutions, the type of solutions in python. And how users come with the different amount of solutions for solving issues. The way to reduce lines of codes and be able to be creative with code.

I like the type of the development, there are different ways to customize this for developers, like adding common modules into the standard library for this problem solving like scipy or numpy. Also the sharing of code and that's where the magic happens. And finally becomes a social network by following people for their updates.