Sean Randall

Any interest in learning to #code from the #Blind community on an old-school platform?

a MOO is a text-based virtual world. if you ever played an old interactive fiction or text adventure game you'll be familiar with the idea. you type in commands like "go north" to move, "put coin in box", "kill dragon with sword" and so forth, and you get written responses unfolding the story.

This type of interface was taken online with a MOO in the 1990's, and rather than a playable story, you can join in and work with other people in an interactive, virtual world.

More than that, as well as just playing, MOO has a rich and beginner-friendly programming language, so you can create objects and code them to do things to your own specifications.

through a series of structured lessons with code samples and plenty of explanation you'll learn some of the basics of any programming language, all whilst having fun and playing about. The world is always open and you can build as many rooms and items as you like. You can practice your written English, socialising and programming all at once, in a 100% text-based environment perfect for screen readers and Braille displays.

This will be my twenty-seventh empty MOO. Each one has gone off in a different direction with between 1 and 15 participants, mostly young visually-impaired school-children and teens needing an introduction to programming in a fun way when the UK introduced coding as part of our national curriculum.
I taught high school computing and college for a decade, and I'm wanting to open this opportunity up to more blind and visually-impaired people because coding is fun, and a MOO is a fun thing to play with.
it's Only worthwhile if we have the numbers though, so if you're not interested please pass on if you can.

https://forms.gle/LkKhqsbYXh6ondQz8

MOO coding, expression of interest

a MOO is a text-based virtual world. if you ever played an old interactive fiction or text adventure game you'll be familiar with the idea. you type in commands like "go north" to move, "put coin in box", "kill dragon with sword" and so forth, and you get written responses unfolding the story. This type of interface was taken online with a MOO in the 1990's, and rather than a playable story, you can join in and work with other people in an interactive, virtual world. More than that, as well as just playing, MOO has a rich and beginner-friendly programming language, so you can create objects and code them to do things to your own specifications. through a series of structured lessons with code samples and plenty of explanation you'll learn some of the basics of any programming language, all whilst having fun and playing about. The world is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and you can build as many rooms and items as you like. You can practice your written English, socialising and programming all at once, in a 100% text-based environment perfect for screen readers and Braille displays. My name is Sean and This will be my twenty-seventh empty MOO. Each one has gone off in a different direction with between 1 and 15 participants, mostly young visually-impaired people wanting an introduction to programming in a fun way. I taught high school computing and college for a decade, and I'm wanting to open this opportunity up to more blind and visually-impaired people because coding is fun, and a MOO is a fun thing to play with. Please fill in this form to help me decide how this community is best served.

Google Docs
Feb 19 at 11:05amWeb
Show threadJayson SmithFeb 19
@cachondo #110127:fill_google_form, line 6: Too much prior MOO experience
... called from #6:react_to_mastodon_post (this == #110127), line 19
... called from #6:browse_mastodon_timeline (this == #110127), line 13
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Show threadSean RandallFeb 19

@jaybird110127 mwahahaha. I like that.

Honestly, for capturing the basics the kids need up to their GED level it's been great fun.

Show threadJayson SmithFeb 19
@cachondo Seriously though, I've been a programmer on many MOOs, and even a wizard on one game, HumanityMOO. I've also started my own play-around MOOs that never really went anywhere.
Show threadSean RandallFeb 19

@jaybird110127 that's pretty cool.
I get a bit sad when the kids all move on every time, so thought I'd see if there's an appetite for doing it more broadly. I have one more teaching session for some early teens this summer then, because I no longer work in education, that's all I have booked in.

I started with just lambda but prefer toast now, not so much for the server improvements but because those with the inclination can easily set up their own server and carry on with it when they're done with me.

Show threadJayson SmithFeb 19
@cachondo I have no idea how far along this is and how much of it actually works properly, but have you seen Moor, a MOO reimplementation in Rust? If not, https://github.com/rdaum/moor
GitHub - rdaum/moor: A system for building shared, programmable, online spaces. Compatible with LambdaMOO.

A system for building shared, programmable, online spaces. Compatible with LambdaMOO. - rdaum/moor

GitHub
Show threadSean RandallFeb 19
@jaybird110127 ooh no, I'd not seen that. INTERESTING!
Show threadJayson SmithFeb 19
@cachondo So what do you typically do? First day of MOO school, do you just have the first room and nothing else, or do you build an area of some kind for them to explore? Also, how do you handle player creation, programmer bits, etc? Just curious.
Show threadSean RandallFeb 19
@jaybird110127 I bulk out the first room so there's a couple of walkable places, which gets across the concept of typing commands. They learn to say, examine, get, drop and cardinarl directions there.
The last place they can walk to is a pickup point for a vehicle of some sort which travels between that public area and a single room owned by each player. so they board or enter the bus, or train, or climb on the dragon's back, or whatever it might be, and exit at their own individual stop to start building.
Player creation has hither to been closed and I just set them up manually with the appropriate permissions.
Show threadAndyFeb 19
@cachondo @jaybird110127 What a fun and creative way to do it!
Show threadJayson SmithFeb 19
@remixman @cachondo LOL I was just remembering the programmer bit application process we had on HumanityMOO. I actually coded that myself if I recall correctly. It asks a bunch of open-ended questions, then sends the results to a special mailing list. Anyway I was testing it out, I think with a dummy account so my application would actually be sent just so the other wizards could laugh at it. One of the questions was something like, "You want to check the value of a property. How would you do this?" and I responded, "Call a realtor."
Show threadSean RandallFeb 19
@jaybird110127 @remixman hahaha.
We don't have realters in Britain. I thought the title of the Piers Anthony novel 'Realty check' had a typo when I first encountered it.
Show threadAndyFeb 19
@jaybird110127 @cachondo LOL I remember that.
Show threadSean RandallFeb 19
@jaybird110127 I've only ever done it with physical access to the people involved though, it's never been a public thing. In fact of all the times I've done it, I think perhaps only 2 or 3 have been over the public Internet, every othre time it's been as a class activity or behind a private VPN.
Show threadAndyFeb 19
@cachondo @jaybird110127 Has anyone gone further and pursued programming or IT or something because of your creative activity?
Show threadSean RandallFeb 19
@remixman @jaybird110127 one of the teens I worked with hosted a virtual birthday party on his own MOO a few months ago, which was pretty fun to attend. Certainly a different type of thing compared with a lot of the kids.
Show threadAndyFeb 19
@cachondo @jaybird110127 Wow, how cool is that!
Show threadSean RandallFeb 19
@remixman @jaybird110127 it was, rather. he'd decorated for Christmas, had a guestbook, and you could even go down some virtual ski slopes (with l and r commands for which way to turn). There was a timed leaderboard and everything.
Show threadJayson SmithFeb 19
@cachondo Just curious, what server and core do you use? Standard LambdaMOO and LambdaCore? Toaststunt with some other core? Write your own MOO implementation in 6502 assembly?
Show threadAriaflameFeb 19
@cachondo I did MUD and MUSH, but most of my coding was in MUSHcode. It was very LISPy.
Show threadSean RandallFeb 19
@ariaflame the thing that seemed to appeal from MOO with children was the ... handoverability of things.
Child 1 would code something fun, then literally "give" it to his friend to play with.
The curriculum requirements aren't overly complicated, which helped. A basic idea of object oriented code with parent and child relationships, some simple conditional and iterative concepts and data types and code execution in a task system were about as far as most of them wanted to go.
Show threadAriaflameFeb 19
@cachondo MUSHcode was object oriented too. You just had to keep track of your parentheses if you made anything complicated.
Show threadAriaflameFeb 19
@cachondo Which isn't to say that I think you should do anything different to what you're doing. It was more of a 'I remember doing something like this'.
Show threadSean RandallFeb 19

@ariaflame lots of good stuff to look back on.

I could never get my head around room names as exits in a MUSH. Years of using cardinal directions have clearly warped my brain.

Show threadTim MakariosFeb 20

@cachondo
Interesting! I have a fair bit of programming experience (mostly Haskell these days), but I don't recall having ever heard of MOOs.

However, it does chime with something I've been pondering for a while: What if there was a programming language with a structure editor (like Lamdu has), so that you can't make syntax errors, but which is designed from the start to have simple text (or arrow key, etc.) input, and simple text output for each command? Instead of visually presenting lots of information at once, this would make it friendlier to screen readers and refreshable Braille displays.

Show threadLady ArtemisFeb 20

@cachondo

OMG I love this!!

I love it!! It is so much so much joy for me!

Thank you thank you 🤗

Show threadSean RandallFeb 20
@missladyartemis :) you sound very happy about it! I hope we get enough people to make it worthwhile.
Show threadGeorgiana BrummellFeb 21
@cachondo I am forty-one and totally blind. I am a DOS lover and have always wanted to learn QuickBASIC but haven't done so yet. I also enjoy text adventures. I am currently in the early stages of studying to become a website accessibility tester and have begun learning html. This sounds like a fascinating project, but can we work in our own space i.e. be isolated as we learn or if we just want to create our own private things or is it strictly interactive with others? What is the difference between this and a MUD? I haven't used one but I am familiar with it. Is Telnet required for this?