Teaching my kid to code with a modern MUD

You'd be surprised what kids can make once you give them the basic building blocks: https://jump.academy/projects/fruit-drop

Sometimes we will let them use AI to make a focused change to their project, like "make the character do a flip when he jumps", then they're getting a fairly controlled diff surrounded by a ton of context, which I think really does boost their coding "literacy". I'd rather my students be able to read code well than write a for loop from memory, so I've found it useful in that sense.

There's a lot of fun "lego-style" creativity to be had in designing rooms, mobs and coming up with grand area designs.

Cool idea.

I think this is an awesome project for them both. And it's totally understandable to use an LLM for the base project as it's a 'fun' thing from the read. it doesn't look like it's trying to compete with anything....

The kid can learn within an environment created by parent, so they can also collaborate on improving that environment, while the kid also has their own learning _within_ that environment.

This seems like a wonderfully geeky adventure to go on if ur kid enjoys it :D love it. hope it will spark some cool interactions between them and make some epic memories :)

Also, maybe people forget how it was like back in the day.

I am not _too_ old - pentium 1 was my first PC. I learned making games in PASCAL, QBASIC and later custom C implementations that came with like 'gamemaker ' CDs etc. this was all very complicated to learn at a young age... Had to get many books and things (no internet!) at the PC shop to try and get my head around it. Never quite did until much later in my life!

Sure things like Scratch exists, but this beauty of this one is that this one is _theirs_. Surely we can recognize the enjoyment that might bring to a parent and kids' lives? Learning is a bonus! Not everything is about being technically the best of the best -_- stop being Marines at everyhting. We're not at war with eachother over who writes the best code.

Good use of LLM technology to make a project in my mind. props!

https://gatewaymud.org/

Curious if that’s coincidence or if players of UO brought that over most likely from MUDs.

https://breaka.club/blog/why-were-building-clubs-for-kids

The primary mechanism through which kids create their game worlds is taking photos of their own hand drawn artwork.

I found traditional game dev tooling was far too technical and verbose for my daughter to stay interested. Honestly, it's not just a matter of her losing interest due to the complexity. Frankly, I don't want her sitting in front of a screen that long. She's a kid and I want her doing typical kid stuff. She and her younger sisters play sports, draw, paint, perform magic shows, and sing and dance around the house like complete nutbags — and I love it!

So whilst what I've built is highly technical for me to maintain, I'm not trying to expose all that complexity to kids. At least, not yet. I'm mostly interested in fueling creativity and letting kids explore. That's not to say kids that want to dive deep can't — we offer visual coding experiences etc. The intent is kids gain access to new features through self directed exploration and play. If some kids stop at just play, that's OK. The primary game mechanics (drawing and building worlds) are still inherently creative.

Although my approach is different, there is a heap in this article I resonant with. The hacking mentality, and letting kids go beyond the artificial constraints in particular. There's still much of Breaka Club that I can improve on. I'm running a limited in-school pilot at present and that's already yielded some really interesting insights. I'm really keen to continue to see what others put out in this space. I think it's drastically underserved and there's plenty of room for multiple approaches.

Also, that ASCII art(or pixel art?) as the header looks serene. Any tips/rabbit holes on achieving that art style?

Hopefully he doesn't come to regret it either.

Edit: To clarify, the languages I created were also half-assed - it's very difficult to create a good one.

Kiddo is not creating anything, that's a delusion.