Code.org Resurrects 'Flappy Bird' As Programming Lesson 72
Nerval's Lobster writes "Flappy Bird might be kaput, but its hilariously awkward hero is serving another useful purpose in its afterlife: teaching people how to code. Flappy Bird, a free mobile game for Android and iOS that asks the player to guide the titular avian through an obstacle course of vertical pipes, became a sensation earlier this year, seizing the top spots on the Apple and Google Play app stores. Its creator, Dong Nguyen, said the game earned him an average of $50,000 a day through in-app advertising — but that didn't stop him from yanking the game offline in early February. Now Code.org has resurrected Flappy Bird, Phoenix-style, from the smoking wreckage, with a free tutorial that allows anyone with a bit of time to code his or her very own version of the game. There's no actual code to learn, thanks to a visual interface that allows budding developers to drag 'blocks' of commands into place. 'Flappy Bird recently met its untimely death. We might've been tempted to cry all day and give up on spreading computer science (not really, but R.I.P Flappy Bird),' read a note on Code.org's blog. 'Instead, we built a new drag-and-drop tutorial that lets you build your own Flappy game — whether it's Flappy Bird, or Flappy Easter Bunny, Flappy Santa, Flappy Shark with Lasers, Flappy Fairy or Flappy Underwater Unicorn.' Childish? Maybe. But it could help draw people into coding for fun or profit."
Copyright? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because he pulled the game does not mean he gave up rights to it.
Lego building != Architect (Score:5, Insightful)
"Flappy Bird might be kaput, but its hilariously awkward hero is serving another useful purpose in its afterlife: teaching people how to code."
and
"There's no actual code to learn, thanks to a visual interface that allows budding developers to drag 'blocks' of commands into place."
So.. you're teaching people to code by not teaching people to code?
Re:Copyright? (Score:5, Insightful)
Rights? Rights to what? Sprites from Mario or the game concept that has been around for decades?
Re:Why all the popularity? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think there exists a good 'why' for games like this getting ridiculously popular. It seems every so often a game will hit a few social circles in just the right way, and enough people will talk about it that it infects other socials, eventually propagating to where it shows up on 'Featured' and 'Hot' lists, which sets off another round of growth.
At least this one's not another variation on Bejeweled (which was itself very derivative).