Kind of obvious but I really wanted to see where they were at as far as logic thinkers - I was impressed with there ability to articulate what they wanted to do all I had to do was write the code My boys were too young (6 and 5 years old) to code.Greenfoot is a great platform for new developers and there are others out there such as: Alice, Kudo, scratch and others, so there is really no excuse to not teach your kids if they are interested.Making games together can be fun and we can actually get something enjoyable done in a short period of time.I wrote the remaining code and added some snips from Michael Kölling's blog. They spent the remainder of or time making trucks, turtles, backgrounds and recording sounds for the game.

I expected this so I did have a back up plan.

At this point and time they saw a turtle run left across a white screen and they were done, shutdoor. It took us roughly 30 minutes of them typing (20 minutes) and going through the greenfoot API docs by themselves (10 minutes) to get that done. Needless to say here is my 6 year old's first lines of code:Īnd the 4 year old's in the Turtle class: Though my boys haven't seen those movies they are familiar with the 'hacker' architype of a guy mashing keys having code fly across the screen to save the world from total meltdown! So, as I expected we hit a productivity wall with the 'code' part of this project. I have to admit, Hollywood makes slamming out bits look cool and easy - not nerd cool like node.js or mongodb but more like socially acceptable 'teen' cool like eating Pringles, drinking mountain dew or jolt and getting away with 'something.' Right now I am snacking on Pringles and drinking mountain dew - the propaganda worked! If (!isDown & Greenfoot.As I sit here listening to the TRON soundtrack I recognize that the flashy code of movies like TRON, anit-trust, hackers and the like have changed the ideal picture of what coding something looks and feels like. Public Key(String keyName, String soundFile) * Create a new key linked to a given keyboard key, and * key and a sound file, which is played when the key is pressed. * This method makes the below keys when compile is hit or the program opens.ĪddObject (new Key ('g', '3a.wav'), i*63 + 54, 140) * A piano that can be played with the computer keyboard. Import greenfoot.* // (World, Actor, GreenfootImage, and Greenfoot)

Here is the code example from the piano class: I am confused in general how the program knows that the keys are set from left to right in the first place. The remaining keys should be next to each other, with no space between them.' Rewrite it (in this document only-not in your working Greenfoot program) to create the keys from right to left, instead of left to right, and force the rightmost key to be flush against the right side of the screen. With this information in mind, copy the new loop code you entered to correctly place the keys in the space below. Recall that the piano is 800 pixels wide. 'According to the text, Greenfoot refers to objects by the midpoint of their lengths and widths. I am working on exercise 5.18 (not the same as the book example) and it says: I am working on my assignment for school and this question has thrown me for a loop, no pun intended, this chapter is about loops and arrays.

Greenfoot play sound