Interesting, you might want to look at the suggested code though, maybe play through with some beginners?

    function init(robot){
        robot.number = 0;
    }

    function loop(robot){
        robot.jump();
        if(robot.number++ % 2 == 0){
            robot.move(2);
        }
    }

This is in the second level.

Incrementing inside a check is awkward, as is just calling the variable 'number'. Perhaps something like

    function init(robot){
        robot.jump_next = true;
    }

    function loop(robot){
        if (robot.jump_next) {
            robot.jump()
            robot.jump_next = false;
        } else {
            robot.move(2);
            robot.jump_next = true;
        }
    }

If I remember correctly, Google's Blockly Games used to allow JavaScript on more than just the last "level". It definitely starts at a much earlier point in the learning process.

The best part of the previous discussions is links to similar technologies; I look forward to seeing what else is mentioned today.

Blockly is a library for building visual programming editors | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10763057 (Dec 2015, 40 comments)

Google's Blockly Games | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8211031 (Aug 2014, 18 comments)

Google Blockly - a visual programming language | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4050426 (Jun 2012, 123 comments)

--

http://learn.code.org/hoc/1 - highly polished Hour of Code

https://tickleapp.com/ - Blockly <-> Swift controlling physical hardware

A neat concept but frustrating when restarting the page loses any code in the script window.

It's an interesting game, but I was immediately put off by level two, which sinks you into the limitations of the robot API by making you introduce a counter that needs checking. That would be totally counter-intuitive for beginners.

Stops working for me after level 1. Repro: 1. https://lab.reaal.me/jsrobot and click "start" 2. Complete the level and click "next level" 3. This takes me to https://lab.reaal.me/jsrobot/#level=2 but the screen is blank 4. Dev tools shows this: "ReferenceError: URLcode is not defined[Learn More] ui.js:32:5"

Using Firefox 56.

I contributed to a similar project[0] for the 2016 7DRL[1].

It was a lot of fun to build but ultimately I just wanted to play the game manually. Someone who tried it back when we released actually wrote a script to control the game turn-by-turn via alert boxes, hah.

[0] https://github.com/bovard/raid

[1] http://7drl.org/

Reminds me of a course I had to take freshman year in college called Karel the Robot[1]. It had a Basic like programming language. It mostly existed to try to quickly bring up to speed the students that has no experience coding prior to college. This is interesting because Javascript is a much more complete language and probably also a it harder to learn if you are just getting started.

Overall, great work though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_(programming_language)

:/ Fun idea, but I wrote a chunk of code for the third level, bumped the electro thing, died, clicked the restart button and it wiped my script. I should know better than to trust browser based text editors, but it made iteration and exploration difficult.

UPDATE: I've fixed the issue where restarting the level clears the script

On the right track, but waaaay to steep a learning curve for an absolute beginner, assuming that is the target audience.

In-line incrementation and Mod operations on level 2 is a fast way to lose beginner interest.

Another example in Action/RPG format

https://codecombat.com

This game is simply amazing. Better interactive tutorial for beginner than Codecademy.

document.write("<h1>you win</h1>")

Great resource for learning Javascript. Good work!

It's a nice idea and really well executed but the second test just demonstrates to me how JS is not an ideal language for a beginner to learn as you're thrown straight into async execution and having to work around the fact that functions execute immediately with arcane workarounds.

I still think Python is the most straightforward to learn, even though the whitespace constantly catches beginners out too.

    robot.action = { action: 'jump' };
    
    robot.action = { action: 'move', amount: 4 };

    etc.

    robot.action = robot.jump();
    
    robot.action = robot.move(4);

    { jump: true, move: 4, shoot: true }

    function loop(robot){
      // your code here
      robot.move(1)
      robot.jump()
    }