JEjensgk·Nov 29, 2022Submission
1 points · Open discussioncoding-horror
basic-computer-games
C#2021–2026
coding-horror / basic-computer-games
basic-computer-games
An updated version of the classic "Basic Computer Games" book, with well-written examples in a variety of common MEMORY SAFE, SCRIPTING programming languages. See https://coding-horror.github.io/basic-computer-games/
11Distinct people
14Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
11.1KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
An updated version of the classic "Basic Computer Games" book, with well-written examples in a variety of common MEMORY SAFE, SCRIPTING programming languages. See https://coding-horror.github.io/basic-computer-games/
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 6:01:08 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year14 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2021-02-19 01:25:43 UTC to 2026-06-21 13:29:46 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
5 sourcesYour list omits BASIC, much of which looked like this:
https://github.com/coding-horror/basic-computer-games/blob/m...
In Ask HN: How much do you use uppercase vs. lowercase characters in your code?My example was "twice by one developer", not "twice across all indexed repos."
A spot check shows that quite a few in your link are used specifically to ensure correct handling of Rust multi-level breaks work syntax, like https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-analyzer/blob/master/crate... , https://github.com/rust-lang/rustfmt/blob/master/tests/sourc... , https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/blob/master/src/tools/rust... , https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/blob/master/src/tools/rust... and likely more.
Another is a translation of BASIC code to Rust, using break as a form of goto. https://github.com/coding-horror/basic-computer-games/blob/e... . The Python version at https://github.com/coding-horror/basic-computer-games/blob/e... doesn't use that approach.
The example at https://github.com/tokio-rs/mio/blob/master/tests/tcp.rs is a nice one
/
Read the rest
/ Wait for our TCP stream to connect
'outer: loop {
poll.poll(&mut events, None).unwrap();
for event in events.iter() {
if event.token() == Token(1) && event.is_writable() {
break 'outer;
}
}
}
though it can be replaced with a helper-function (note: I don't fully know what the code is doing, but the following looks right):
def find_writable_event(events):
for event in events:
if event.token() == Token(1) and event.is_writable():
return True
while 1:
poll.poll(events, None)
if find_writable_event(events):
break
So while there's likely a good real-world example of something which can't easily be re-written in an alternative form for Python, simply pointing to a grep result isn't all that persuasive.
There is an ongoing effort to port those games from David Ahl's book into modern languages. It includes Hammurabi, if you'd like to experience it on a modern system: https://github.com/coding-horror/basic-computer-games/tree/m...
This was previously discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26188324
In The Sumerian GameDefinitely recommend MIT's Scratch, it's the closest thing (in terms of "they don't even know they're coding!") to Hypercard out there, tons of games and community examples, my kids make animated movies with it.
There's a board game Robot Turtles based on the Logo version where you provide instructions via a stack of cards to navigate your turtle through a maze.
The game is scored like golf, fewer cards are better, and it includes looping cards.
Definitely designed more for elementary students but it's visual, intuitive, and you (as parent) can "design" the maze.
There are several similar video games (they are simple and cute enough to paper their very dry subject matter, and they are level/puzzle based so easy to dole out in manageable amounts of enthusiasm )
Lightbot
Human Resource Machine
7 Billion Humans
Also my kids and I whiteboarde
Read the rest
d out and then coded a few of the games from
https://github.com/coding-horror/basic-computer-games
It was fun acting as the game designer who wanted this feature or that!