Real-world debugging with CodeCombat

CodeCombat glitch

I’m in London forÂ three days this week, which means I get an extra evening to play CodeCombat. This is good, as some of the kids in the Computing Club I run on a Monday are already ahead of me (including my son!)

What I’m enjoying about learning through playing a game is that I’m learning how to read code almost by osmosis. A great example of this was just now when I was convinced the code I’d written was correct. After a quick look on a forum, it turns out I was correct and there was a glitch on that level.

Let’s just unpack that for a second:

  1. I’ve become confident enough to know when my code should run properly and when it’s ‘not my fault’.
  2. I searched for other people’s experienceÂ facing the same problem.
  3. Having read throughÂ discussions, I foundÂ a workaround using Python.
  4. I converted the Python codeÂ to JavaScript in my head.
  5. Then I completed the level successfully.

From talking to people who code for their day jobÂ over the last few years, this sounds a lot like real world programming… 🙂