[ungzd]

I'm not sure if such games can help to learn programming. For example, Robocode is very dynamics-based and requires knowledge of control theory (which involves partial differential equations) and decision making under uncertainty. I'm doing software development for almost 10 years and yet such games are too hard for me. These games can help you to learn "AI" but not programming. It's simpler to create your own Robocode game from scratch than to master creating bots for it.

[CGamesPlay]

I don't know about that one but I've recently become pretty active the in the Screeps community (https://screeps.com/) and many of the players are first-time JavaScript programmers. In fact, one of the players in the top 20 for the game told me he had only been programming for ~40 hours before starting the game.

Control systems are very important in the game (the high-level is almost as much a logistics game as it is a tactics game), but you don't get to think about those until you can successfully walk your units around and complete basic tasks.

[ungzd]

Looks interesting. At least it's not competition-based and more sandbox-like. In global competition you are required to use state of the art techniques, and there's no other ways to just having fun.

[stephengillie]

Maybe try a Fruitbot? Scribd originally hosted the competition years ago, but it's on its own site now: http://fruitbots.org

It's fun and easy to download a Randombot to modify, even if you don't upload it to the public competition. It might just be a good place to try a new language, like Lua or Ruby.

[anta40]

Robocode is very interesting if you want to learn AI programming in Java.

But for learning the Java programming language itself? Hmm definitely not.

[michelpereira]

Agree with you, will put a more appropriated name on the list.

[michelpereira]

I wasn't sure either, so I was looking for learning a new programming language when I found Robocode and General IO. I'll look forward to get the right name for the list.