Can you really learn ethereum from dogs or zombies?

If you’re reading this article on this site, or are browsing this site in general, I think it’s safe to assume that you’re the type of person who enjoys learning more about blockchain news and innovation, but what if you want to make money not by trading, but by coding? If you don’t want to look at the charts day after day or can’t handle the anxiety of the ups and downs, I’m happy to tell you there’s an easy way to learn how to code your own games on the ethereum platform. It doesn’t matter if you have had years of coding experience (though it surely does help) or none at all, you can get started creating your very own games on ethereum right now. There are many sites out there that will teach you coding on solidity and ethereum, but for this particular review, I’m going to talk about my two favorites, Crypto Zombies and Space Doggos

Crypto Zombies is formatted in a way that makes you feel like you’re playing a game less than taking a course. There’s levels to get through and stages to pass in order to complete your game code. Overall, the format is pretty straightforward and relatively easy to figure out. It’s free to play and doesn’t require you to download any software, so I decided to give it a shot and see what I could possibly learn from animated zombies.

It starts off simple enough, the pacing is pretty decent for beginners and it doesn’t seem to overwhelm you at any point with the content. As a beginner to coding, and complete newbie to ethereum programming, I found that it was easy to pick up on and retain and after a few levels I was really starting to get the hang of it. It can be a little overwhelming if you’re trying to do it all in one sitting, but if you’re taking notes and really trying to let everything sink in, you could probably finish the whole course within a weekend. The question is, could you go directly into coding a game from there? Personally, I think you may still need a little assistance.

Space Doggos is very similar to Crypto Zombies in that it’s basically the same format except it just goes straight to giving you the answers if you get stuck rather than gently guide you to them by showing where the errors are in your code. This can be a little discouraging to actually retaining the information and guiding the user to find the answers on their own. Regardless, I feel it’s great to see a different approach to coding a game so you can better understand how the code communicates to different aspects. While it’s not as user friendly, it’s still an excellent way to learn coding games on ethereum.

While the format on both are pretty great and easy to understand, there is still a lack of ability to show you exactly how the commands would be implemented onto a blank slate, or completely new type of game itself. While they do a wonderful job at getting down the basics, there’s a lot of aspects that could be clarified or just expanded on a little further to help guide new developers form their own ideas and concepts for games. The format given by Crypto Zombies and Space Doggos feels somewhat isolated just to that type and style of game and it feels a little restricting. Nevertheless, it’s taught me a lot about coding on ethereum and it is certainly worth the time to try out if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

What do you think? Have you gave this game a try? Are there any other resources you know of for learning blockchain programming? Let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Thank you for reading and as always, go long and prosper.

-Satoshi Spockamoto