PyWeCode: Towards a Collaborative Coding Framework based on the arcade Python Library

Abstract

We present preliminaries ideas and a prototype implementation of a collaborative environment based on gamification aimed at teaching coding and software life cycle principles such as design, development, and testing to beginners. As a guide example, we consider a two player game in which each player can dynamically modify its strategy via a simple rule-based language. In this setting the player console plays the role of usual coding tools. However, the sprite controlled by each player can be viewed as a sort of reactive module that interacts with the other players within the chosen game. The game starts with a default strategy. During a game play, players can then adapt their strategy by updating the rules that govern the behaviour of their sprites. The prototype is designed on top of the Python arcade library extended with a communication middleware built on top of asyncio and zeromq to run the environment on a set of remote machines.