Learning puzzles

Hey everyone :slightly_smiling_face:
I saw a few weeks ago in the chat a learning puzzle. The idea behind learning puzzles is really great, so I suggest dedicating a section for it in the puzzles page.

Let me explain myself. A learning puzzle is a puzzle that explains to you
a concept and then you can practice the concept by solving the puzzle.

The puzzle was created by @_CG_loick and his friend, workers in CG. They made two very nice puzzles, one is about Bubble sort with a video explaining the concept and the other is about Path finding with a very good explanation.

In March 2015 @_CG_loick has suggested the idea of learning puzzles in the Forum, everyone liked it, but to my disappointment it never became official.

I believe and think that puzzles like those are very helpful and useful. They teach a concept in an easy way and then you can implement it right away in the puzzle and understand it better.

I have a few more related suggestions:

  1. Once there is such a section, allow people to contribute themselves learning puzzles.
  2. Today, a click on the ‘learning opportunities’ tags of a puzzle (any regular puzzle) you get to a place that shows you all the associated puzzles with the same learning tag as well as links to external resources. I suggest to add there links to relevant learning puzzles that teaches the specific concept.

Waiting to hear your opinion :smiley:

The links to the puzzles @_CG_loick and his friend created:
Bubble sort - http://www.codingame.com/direct-puzzle/bubble-sort
Path finding - http://www.codingame.com/direct-puzzle/path-finding

The link to @_CG_loick’s suggestion:

@TwoSteps, I was told by @eulerscheZahl that you are probably the one to address my suggestion. so please let me know if this makes sense.

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Yes it looks like a good idea.
The tags already exist, so some puzzles could get a special ‘learning’ flag to indicate you can learn/practice content related to their tag like you proposed.

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Hello, very interesting topic here :wink:
We created Playgrounds (on the learn section) to specifically focus on the learning aspect. This is why the theory can be written in markdown with full of options. The viewer mechanism makes the knowledge validation possible by integrating puzzles directly in your markdown.

What I want to highlight is that we should avoid splitting a same goal (learning) across several sections of the website to avoid confusion.

How can we make all these things work together? I mean why do you think the puzzle format is more appropriate than the playgrounds? Or is there a better way to use Playgrounds (move them to another section, add some missing features…)?

Let us know :wink:

Hey, Thanks for your positive response :smiley:

I understand the challenge of offering ways of learning in different sections.
Puzzles have a value of their own. So maybe you can add a sub section in the learn section with the learning puzzles.

I think that the format puzzle that I have introduced here is better than the learning topics for couple of reasons:

  1. Familiarity:
    CG uses this puzzle format in all of their games: CoC, Multiplayer, puzzles.
    I think it just make sense that the users learning would have this format, because they are familiar with it and feel convenient to experiment this way.

  2. Illustrative:
    In the learning puzzles there is illustration of your code that is more friendly than just blank code area to write in with no illustration.

  3. Comprehensive tests:
    In the learning puzzles there are couple of test cases that check your code and not just one like in the playgrounds.

  4. Language gap overcoming:
    The learning topics are written in several languages so if someone don’t know French (for example) they won’t understand the topic.
    I know that this can be solved but it would take a lot of time and instead you can just start making learning puzzles that are written in English.

  5. Embedding Videos:
    There can be videos built in the learning puzzles. I believe that you can put links to videos in the learning subject but it’s not built into the topic. A puzzle with an embedded video makes it easier to understand.

Sorry it took me time to response, I hope the above makes sense. :smiley:

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