Monday, November 4, 2013

Number Guessing Game

It is a famous game based on math, which could at first make great impression.

One person selects a number between 1 and 1000, the second should guess it with only 10 questions. First player can answer only 'Yes' or 'No', so the questions should be like "Is your number greater than..." etc.

We can implement such game in the following form: User chooses the number and Computer tries to guess it. Program should use Binary Search. The more thorough description is provided here: Binary Search - Wiki at CodeAbbey

And let us see how it works - in the console emulator below you can play the game!

Thursday, October 31, 2013

The book on programming games and puzzles by Jacques Arsac

I'm a junior IT-specialist, and I am employed as quality assurance engineer.

Few months ago I understood that I want more than testing software. I want to be able write programs myself.

I asked my colleague who is a senior developer and he told me that my learning is not going to be easy, but it is nevertheless possible. He handed to me old paperback book (it is almost as old as I am).


Book is really ancient - it was written when computers were using magnetic tapes as persistent storage instead of hard drives. Author claims that his personal computer has 20*12 alphanumeric screen. :D

However, it is really cool thing. It is about programming primitive games (suitable for playing in console, step by step). It does not give solutions - only problem statements and some hints.

The name of the author is Jacques Arsac.

However, it is a great pity that the book is not translated to English. At least I failed to find a translation (though I read it in translation myself - it is translated in German and Russian).

I'm going to try to retell most notable chapters from the book while I progress through it. I hope I'll succeed.