Even speaking as a software engineer who knows Python, this game hugely turns me off. There's no joy in this programming, even if I were to ignore that this is in NO way a simulation of real-life SWE.

Some of it is that the environment is buggy--for example, I intermittently have a problem where the spawner in the three-sorter leaves the initial object spawn hanging mid-air, so the belt beneath it never returns that it is carrying something. I think it has something to do with putting the environment in a pause state while the object is still falling after a reset, but I can't tell. It just happens sometimes and it's frustrating when it does.

The IDE is buggy too. For some reason, when I put a line like `belt0 = ConveyorBelt.find("belt0")` into the three-sorter, it usually won't autocomplete methods for belt0 in lines under it until I reset the environment. I found it really hit or miss re: what the IDE will auto-complete and what it won't.

A lot of it is that OMG it's clumsy trying to juggle a code window and look at actual objects in your environment to find their names. There's no simple mouseover for environment object state, as far as I can tell, so you can only pop persistent windows by clicking on stuff--which come up HUGE because for some reason everything other than the coding window is using something like 24 point font even on my 4K screen and there's no scaling option. Then you have to close them again to click through anything beneath them.

It all quickly becomes window salad, and I find myself constantly moving the coding window around and micromanaging object state windows trying to expose stuff beneath them. And if I shrink the coding window to try to expose more environment space, size-huge icons hang off the right side instead of scaling to stay in the window. It's all very annoying.

And god help you if you're in full screen mode but need the API reference up at the same time, because for some reason it launches them in your browser. So then you get to fight Windows z-order too. Among other issues, if you background the browser window by clicking on the game, the next time you try to launch the API docs won't foreground the browser window again. So the reference button seems like it just does nothing until you fish back the window yourself.

Why there's a full step-debugging IDE and windowing system implemented but not a simple in-game API browser, I do not know, but it was a mistake for a game with an API that's this complex. Ditto not having a interface font-size option. That's just IDE 101.

But honestly--80%+ of my negative reaction is that I think it was a *GROSS* error in design to put a time limit on challenges that ticks down *WHILE YOU'RE CODING*, even if it is for "bonus." Of course it's not just bonus--to a Zachlike player every objective on the screen is an objective, so if we don't beat that time limit we lost the level whether or not the next one unlocked.

I can't even tell if it was intended to have the timer going in the coding phase. The timer goes back to start if you reset the environment before running (but only if you do that) and ticks down at 0.01x if you hit the pause button while coding (this is probably how I stumbled into the spawner bug above).

But what having an on-screen timer ticking down definitely does is raise my anxiety through the roof--especially since even pause just slows it way down instead of freezing it. Coding is not meant to be a timed race, and I do not like feeling like I'm cheating by having to repeatedly manually reset the environment so it won't tell me I failed the objective before I ever hit run.

I realize I don't have much time spent in the game, but I don't expect any of this to get better later so can't bring myself to play further. If I can't even get through something simple like the three-sorter without wanting to throw something at the screen because the flow is so terrible, I cannot imagine what an awful experience solving harder problems must be.

So I just can't recommend this. The real time environment crossed with the IDE is an impressive development feat, but it's not fun at all to code in. I feel like I'm constantly fighting with the interface, and the addition of the timer makes this anything but pleasurable for me. Exercising Python skills through something like Hackerrank or Leetcode is frankly more fun and more effective--and free. Sometimes less is more.

Even speaking as a software engineer who knows Python, this game hugely turns me off. There's no joy in this programming, even if I were to ignore that this is in NO way a simulation of real-life SWE. Some of it is that the environment is buggy--for example, I intermittently have a problem where the spawner in the three-sorter leaves the initial object spawn hanging mid-air, so the belt beneath it never returns that it is carrying something. I think it has something to do with putting the environment in a pause state while the object is still falling after a reset, but I can't tell. It just happens sometimes and it's frustrating when it does. The IDE is buggy too. For some reason, when I put a line like `belt0 = ConveyorBelt.find("belt0")` into the three-sorter, it usually won't autocomplete methods for belt0 in lines under it until I reset the environment. I found it really hit or miss re: what the IDE will auto-complete and what it won't. A lot of it is that OMG it's clumsy trying to juggle a code window and look at actual objects in your environment to find their names. There's no simple mouseover for environment object state, as far as I can tell, so you can only pop persistent windows by clicking on stuff--which come up HUGE because for some reason everything other than the coding window is using something like 24 point font even on my 4K screen and there's no scaling option. Then you have to close them again to click through anything beneath them. It all quickly becomes window salad, and I find myself constantly moving the coding window around and micromanaging object state windows trying to expose stuff beneath them. And if I shrink the coding window to try to expose more environment space, size-huge icons hang off the right side instead of scaling to stay in the window. It's all very annoying. And god help you if you're in full screen mode but need the API reference up at the same time, because for some reason it launches them in your browser. So then you get to fight Windows z-order too. Among other issues, if you background the browser window by clicking on the game, the next time you try to launch the API docs won't foreground the browser window again. So the reference button seems like it just does nothing until you fish back the window yourself. Why there's a full step-debugging IDE and windowing system implemented but not a simple in-game API browser, I do not know, but it was a mistake for a game with an API that's this complex. Ditto not having a interface font-size option. That's just IDE 101. But honestly--80%+ of my negative reaction is that I think it was a *GROSS* error in design to put a time limit on challenges that ticks down *WHILE YOU'RE CODING*, even if it is for "bonus." Of course it's not just bonus--to a Zachlike player every objective on the screen is an objective, so if we don't beat that time limit we lost the level whether or not the next one unlocked. I can't even tell if it was intended to have the timer going in the coding phase. The timer goes back to start if you reset the environment before running (but only if you do that) and ticks down at 0.01x if you hit the pause button while coding (this is probably how I stumbled into the spawner bug above). But what having an on-screen timer ticking down definitely does is raise my anxiety through the roof--especially since even pause just slows it way down instead of freezing it. Coding is not meant to be a timed race, and I do not like feeling like I'm cheating by having to repeatedly manually reset the environment so it won't tell me I failed the objective before I ever hit run. I realize I don't have much time spent in the game, but I don't expect any of this to get better later so can't bring myself to play further. If I can't even get through something simple like the three-sorter without wanting to throw something at the screen because the flow is so terrible, I cannot imagine what an awful experience solving harder problems must be. So I just can't recommend this. The real time environment crossed with the IDE is an impressive development feat, but it's not fun at all to code in. I feel like I'm constantly fighting with the interface, and the addition of the timer makes this anything but pleasurable for me. Exercising Python skills through something like Hackerrank or Leetcode is frankly more fun and more effective--and free. Sometimes less is more.