I think that programming should feel like gaming

Interesting! I think game-like programming could really help with motivation from time to time. But while games need to be challenging / difficult by design to entertain their players, you'd still want programming to be as easy as possible, right?

correct, that’s one thing that would be different of course. Also, I wasn’t thinking about intentional gamification of programming (with high scores etc to motivate you — to me programming is addictive enough as it is), I was thinking more along the lines of making the interactions “fluid”, making the feedback immediate, and building a “control scheme” similar to what games do, like say you “use the left stick to walk, but if you also press it down, you run”. So maybe I’m looking for that kind of “physicality” for when you control your cursor (or whatever other “avatar” represents the programmer on screen).

One thing that tends to make a game a game is that you have some idea about what forward progress would be and what to do to make it. Not so much with programming or authoring tools.

@Stathis LEGO is a game and its practically Programming.

@humberto LEGO is a toy 🙂 it does not respond to your actions actively!

@humberto Having recently spent ~10 hours (over a week) building LEGO boat 31083 with my four year-old and loving every minute, I am genuinely curious what connection you see with Programming.

@wtaysom hey! well, some Programming tools are block-based (Scratch) and some others are workflow-based which is also close to blocks (Slack). they remind me of legos. me and my team are extending this pattern to spreadsheets. we're about to release dashdash, a programming tool with a spreadsheet UI. essentially, every cell is the LEGO block, and we let you put services, APIs, automation, side-effects inside them.

programming is not like gaming at all. It will never resemble it. In gaming you live in a world with a pre-designed set of rules, terrain, characters, opponents, weapons, missions, goals, hazards, etc. All the work of clever designers and artists and programmers. Programming is the equivalent of sitting down at your typewriter, with a blank piece of paper, and writing a novel. You have unlimited potentials, but with that massive possible variety comes writer's block, confusion, and often mediocrity because you can't sustain the early energy. Designing and building something is not the same as using it.

@Edward de Jong / Beads Project though reading and writing, generally speaking, are simultaneously connected and dissimilar activities. Being a good reader does not make one a good writer, but it's a bit rare for a good writer to not be well read.

@Edward de Jong / Beads Project I appreciate the opposing view… I was thinking more along the lines of similarities in control schemes and the kind of feedback that you get from the “IDE”/game rather than predictability and pre-designed environments