If you want to learn to program you can look for online courses, but you can also do so by playing video games.
Learning to program has many benefits. Besides the obvious ones, such as having the chance to create your own web pages, applications and games and even have a career as a developer, it is also good for the brain; it’s as if you were learning another language. Learning to code improves the memory and increases concentration. For these reasons, countries like Estonia have included programming language lessons in their children’s primary education as a way of preparing them for the digital future we already live in.
Fortunately, it is never too late to learn and thanks to the Internet, there are many ways of obtaining knowledge about all kinds of things. One of the skills with the most available resources is programming, with countless free or paid courses for whatever the level of learning you need. But this is not the only way of learning; there are several games which have been created just for this purpose. Specially designed to teach programming, these six games allow you to learn to program in an entertaining and different way.
CodeCombat
CodeCombat is a multi-player online game which was created based on the idea that if you’re going to get hooked on a game, it may as well be one which helps you learn in as entertaining a way as possible. To play you need to create an account and browse through the 110 available classes for your free subscription. There is a premium version costing US$9.99 which provides 80 additional classes for practising, support via e-mail, video tutorials and 3500 additional gems each month. The game is ideal for children over 9 years of age and adults, and there is no need for prior programming knowledge. The website is in English, but there are incomplete Spanish versions thanks to the translations made by players around the world.
CodinGame
CodinGame is another website which has been created based on the idea that creating codes should be fun. For this reason they have a website with about 50 games for solo players with a tutorial level to enable them to learn how it works, with beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. They also have a section to optimize the codes of some games and seven multi-player games. There is a section called Clash of Code where you can compete with other developers, a skills section which offers prizes for the winners and finally, a place where you can get jobs with companies from different countries who contract experts in programming languages.
Code & Conquer
Code & Conquer is a social strategy game which attempts to teach programming by making players program how their characters will react. The aim is to control an entire army, creating strategies which make you win by using a code. The game is in English and has not been released yet, but it will be available in demo version in early 2016 and will be freemium.
Checkio
As a player in Checkio you enter a world which has been created by the community and where the developers which join can develop new levels so that others can try them. In this case it is necessary to know just a little about programming, because even the first exercises are a bit advanced for those who have no knowledge of it. The good thing about it is that many of the games are translated into Spanish and everything is free.
CodeWars
CodeWars is a game for developers who already have knowledge of programming but want to improve. The idea is to compete against others and win honours and levels, but at the same time the community will help you to compare the code you have created with those of others, thereby learning different solutions to the problems you are faced with. The website is in English and for the moment only has CoffeeScript, Python, Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Clojure, Haskell and C# exercises.
CodeHunt
CodeHunt is a game created by Microsoft in which players have to detect fragments of code which have disappeared and replace them with their own solutions in Java or C#. As they progress, the players learn about variables, search algorithms, arithmetic operators and so on.
