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NWO ICT.Open is the Dutch national conference on Information Technology. This year, the event takes place on April 10–11 at the Jaarbeurs in Utrecht. On Thursday April 11th, we will demonstrate Vie, a visual programming evironment for creating simple 2D game protoypes. Please find the title and abstract below. Come visit us at our stand.

A Live Programming Tutorial that uses Game-Based Learning

Educating novices in the art of programming is a key challenge in computer science education. To make the learning experience more engaging and fun, we propose a combination of live programming and game based learning. Specifically, we introduce visual feedback, with every minor code change, for exploring the immediate effects.

We demonstrate Vie, a visual live programming environment for simultaneously prototyping and play testing a game’s mechanisms [1, 2]. Originally designed as a professional game design tool, we have now successfully applied Vie in a programming tutorial [3].

At the CWI open day, kids aged 8 to 14 engaged in exploratory programming using two design themes: a) recovering a lost bunny (Fig. 1) and b) preventing climate change. In this live demo at ICT.Open, participants of ICT Open can also try this tutorial, and experience its main goals: “programming is fun; can be visual too; and is for everyone”.

References

  1. Riemer van Rozen. “Cascade: A Meta-Language for Change, Cause and Effect”. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Language Engineering. ACM, 2023. DOI: 10.1145/3623476.3623515
  2. Riemer van Rozen. “Game Engine Wizardry for Programming Mischief”. In: Proceedings of the Workshop on Programming Abstractions and Interactive Notations, Tools, and Environments, PAINT. ACM, 2023. DOI: 10.1145/3623504.3623570
  3. Riemer van Rozen. 2023. Zelf Leuke Spelregels Ontwerpen. In CWI Open Dag, Weekend van de Wetenschap, 7 Oktober 2023.