[racket] untrusted

On Apr 17, 2014, at 1:44 PM, Neil Van Dyke <neil at neilvandyke.org> wrote:

> Asumu Takikawa wrote at 04/17/2014 01:16 PM:
>> It would be great if someone does a Racket port. Could make the graphics
>> rogue-like by using Neil's charterm library:
>>   http://planet.racket-lang.org/display.ss?package=charterm.plt&owner=neil
> 
> I'm always happy for people to use CharTerm, but for this particular app, I think someone would have an easier time implementing the editor part in a Racket GUI, or with an AJAX-y Web interface (preferably with jQuery UI or jQuery Mobile, plus add-ons).  Or make the game a DrRacket plugin, for a first-rate editing experience.
> 
> BTW, another great game to inspire learning programming and AI methods is something in the spirit of Crobots ("http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crobots").  The very general idea is that you program a virtual robot to operate in a virtual world, and you have some kind of metric for success.  In the case of Crobots, it also has the appeal of being competitive and violent, in that you run different robot programs against each other in the same virtual world, and the robots can shoot each other.  Hook this up to a world that lets people watch 3D graphics of the Racket-implemented AIs play against each other, and that could be a lot of fun.  Put live displays visible from school hallways of the AIs interacting in 3D, including display of whatever stats/ranking/honors you have, and a URL and QR code where people can go to get info on how to program AIs for it themselves.  Suddenly, pursuing a CS major seems like more fun.  Surely some school that has a substantial video game programming track/classes also has a good Racket person.  (Do this soon in Racket, before someone does it in JS and poisons young minds further.)


In principle, yes, agreed very much. 

But let me issue a warning that there are people out there who object to games for various reasons, some real, some issued by the PC police. Just recently I worked with a colleague at a Boston university whose departments forbids its instructors and professors the use of games in all courses (with a curious exception) for reasons that only Orwell could have dreamt up. Keep this in mind before your enthusiasm carries you away. 

-- Matthias