Good for practice?

[Grilled Cheese Marine]

I am looking for a game that helps with actual reinforcement of programming knowledge. I am personaly not a fan of these but my friend insited I try a method of "play and learn" I am looking for a game that works to help reinforce programming skills/knowledge and maybe help to develop it. Is this it or should I look some palce else.

[antipothis]

From what I've played, this is VERY specific to machine learning.
It's a little bit more advanced than normal loop programming. For example, there are conditionals that can send out bad data, and you have to account for that.
I'm really enjoying this, but I would also recommened Prime Mover, and any of the Zachtronics games, expecially space chem, or exa punks.

[GospodinNoob]

Originally posted by Dr.Pepe:

I am looking for a game that helps with actual reinforcement of programming knowledge. I am personaly not a fan of these but my friend insited I try a method of "play and learn" I am looking for a game that works to help reinforce programming skills/knowledge and maybe help to develop it. Is this it or should I look some palce else.

Hi

In our game, you can solve some Reinforcement learning tasks (self-driving car). If you don't have an experience (or have low experience) in RL and machine learning, game can give some basic info to you.

But for an advanced level, you will need to study papers and courses. If you want, I can show smth interesting RL courses to you.

[delerium76]

Originally posted by Dr.Pepe:

I am looking for a game that helps with actual reinforcement of programming knowledge. I am personaly not a fan of these but my friend insited I try a method of "play and learn" I am looking for a game that works to help reinforce programming skills/knowledge and maybe help to develop it. Is this it or should I look some palce else.

This comment is strictly pertaining to this game in relation to programming, and not a reflection of how good this game is.

As a programmer, I've looked over this game and how it "plays" and this game isn't really designed to teach good programming skills.
1. In this game, you have an acceptable ratio of bad data allowed, which is not really how programming actually works. As a programmer you are trained to handle bad data 100% of the time, because if not it will likely crash your program or worse yet it won't function right but give no errors.
2. In this game, code reuse (termed custom nodes or DLL's) will actually run faster than the parts they are made of, which is COMPLETELY backwards from how programming works. That is more of an IC (integrated circuit) effect, which I guess this game is trying to emulate.
3. I personally don't like the concept of requiring you to buy hardware upgrades or game the DLL/custom node system to get gold medals. In the programming sense, when you write a program, it's either well written and works properly, or it isn't. The hardware or dll tricks shouldn't matter, and you shouldn't be graded on that, because it's mostly out of your control anyway. So for me, all gold medals should be attainable at the time you attempt them using the basic parts available to you. Again, in the programming world, Custom nodes (classes) and DLL's do nothing but save you workspace, ease of use, and readability. They don't speed up your program.

This game seems more about the logic of machine learning not programming. Strictly from a programming standpoint, Exapunks is closer to what you are looking for. That's not to say that this game won't teach you good logic skills that are useful in programming, because that it will do, and is probably worth buying for that reason alone. That and it's cheaper than Exapunks also makes it a good buy. Personally, I think they're both probably worth it to polish your skills with.