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Ask HN: Would a game to teach Bash & *nix be worth-while?

29 points by timruffles ↗ HN
I got struck by the idea to build a game to teach Bash & *nix.

It'd be modelled on classic kung-fu movies where you'd learn with a master (Master Foo, clearly), to battle the evil Master Blub. Badges, leader-boards and all other buzzwords would be present. Have a look - http://banzaibash.com

Does it sound like something you or anyone else would find useful? If I could get around 250 preorders that'd be enough to take the time off to build it.

34 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 86.9 ms ] thread
wyclif
Yes.
timruffles
Thanks very much for your support wyclif, any suggestions?
vgurgov
interesting idea itself, depends on execution.

i'd suggest to highlight that its productivity game for Mac OS console as well.

i believe Mac users will more likely pay for that.

timruffles
Thanks, that's good advice, Mac users (I use Mac) are definitely happier to pay for productivity stuff - OmniFocus etc. I'll add that :)
rudin
Loving the concept but maybe you should be charitable and make it free as it is really just a tutorial + triggers.
timruffles
I'd love to but I'm not really at a point in my life where I can do a whole project full time for fun :) Since it'd be cloud based (as you'd be doing things which would be dangerous to do on your home system, under time pressure) it'd have running costs, and I expect the security aspect to be tricky.
newsisan
Maybe user chooses how much they pay?

Don't write this on there, but have default at 20, minimum at 1/3/5/10 and obviously no maximum. I'd pay $5 if its good :)

souperhearo
What about using something like kickstarter to raise money?
timruffles
I wish I could, but Kickstarter is US only. The alternative, invested.in doesn't look that strong.

I think you're right that it's a model that would work well - if I could raise the money to code it I'd happily make it open source after that (running costs means it'd have to cost something to use on someone's server).

noctrine
What about IndieGoGo?
rick_2047
I just wish there was something of non-US citizens (especially India) like kickstarter and with the strong community that kickstarter has
schelle
I'm not sure exactly what you are looking for, but IndieGoGo has had a lot of successful non-US projects. Community is building every day, and the payment options (e.g. PayPal & direct credit card) are not US only. Check it out.
Yzupnick
Totally understandable, but $20 seems high for this kind of thing. For me at least...
ivanstojic
+1 because I feel what you are saying... but I'm with the OP on this one. Learning is free, being taught (even by a tutorial+triggers) is not.
timruffles
Okay thanks for all the suggestions re Crowdsourcing etc. I've just put up a page on http://www.indiegogo.com/Banzai-Bash to do exactly that.

Re free - if I raise the money to cover my living costs, I'll make the game open source. You'll easily be able to spin it up on a VM/cloud server (or your home comp if you're brave/foolish) for free! What's better, is that you'd be able to modify to teach your own language/project.

ody
Good idea however your site has no news, contact info etc .. nothing apart from an overview of the product and links to paypal .. add some info about yourself at least and I'll cough up £11.99.

Good luck!

timruffles
Thanks! Good point, I'll pop some more stuff up!
timruffles
About me page now up (isn't it awkward writing about yourself :D). I'll pop more stuff in as it happens!
ody
Have you checked out Hacker Evolution? Might be a good source of ideas. It also strikes me that £20 may be a tad much to ask for an interactive fiction text game.
NickPollard
But £20 might be well worth it for the skills and productivity gained.

Products are worth what value they provide, not what they cost to make.

scrrr
Nice, but I think game-features make sense where the actual learning perhaps is non-existant or not rewarding enough. When learning how to use a shell you have successes along the way anyway and you don't need any score or badge to feel happy.
timruffles
I agree, but command-line skills were something I didn't consider learning explicitly - not really knowing how useful it'd be. I know a lot of developers with just a sketchy understanding of a tiny part of them!
aw3c2
I might be inclined to buy it if it was a "pay as you go" model where much smaller amounts of money can unlock the next set of levels.

Maybe a model like Project Euler (with paid-stages) would work better? I'd much prefer it to be free of course.

timruffles
That's a cool idea, especially as lots of people wouldn't need the basics, just the advanced stuff.
meastham
You've got a typo in the last screenshot, "direcotry"
timruffles
Good spot, you're in the git log now :)
thirdstation
Have you considered selling this as an assessment tool? You'd probably have to drop the Kung-fu theme but that doesn't mean it would have to be boring either.

I think a scored and timed test would be really useful to HR departments at large corporations who need to screen technical applicants.

One hitch is that with most thing *nix, TMTOWTDI. Do you check for the result or do you check the command typed? Just as an example, your screenshots show the pushd/popd lesson. If prompted to change to my home directory in under two seconds I'd just type 'cd'. To get back to where I used to be I'd type 'cd -'. I never use pushd/popd. If the lesson is presented as 'use pushd and popd to navigate the filesystem' then there's no issue.

timruffles
It's a good point - I am planning to be result oriented, for anything complex it'd be impossible to think of all the ways you could sensibly achieve it.
orta
your paypal redirects to yoursite.co.uk instead of a thank you page! I hope you get around to doing this, cause it looks like an interesting project.
sga
I'm very intrigued. This is definitely one of the skills I'd like to improve upon. But I'd like to play with a demo episode first before forking over the preorder cash.
gwilliams
How about a game to teach regex? That would be awesome. "Write a regex that will match xxx and yyy but not zzz", for example.
timruffles
Interesting - regex could be an expansion pack :)