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
@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.

@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.

@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
@jaybird110127 ooh no, I'd not seen that. INTERESTING!
@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.
@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.
@cachondo @jaybird110127 Has anyone gone further and pursued programming or IT or something because of your creative activity?
@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.
@cachondo @jaybird110127 Wow, how cool is that!
@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.