My Last Post on This Domain

OK guys,

I think that it is time for me to publish the last post on this blog using WordPress as a domain. As you probably already know, GitHub is my favorite company and I have decided to switch my blog to a completely new domain.

I have published a couple of posts exclusively on the new domain and backed up every post from this domain to my new address (with one exception, but I’m working on it). I feel confident now to make the switch and I started to feel really comfortable using GitHub + Jekyll as a blogging platform, so I’ve decided to drop by and say good bye to my old domain.

From now on, you can follow me on r3bl.github.io. Be sure to use the http version of the site because https version is currently not properly implemented in the code. If you run into some issue while browsing the site or you miss a feature that I had implemented on this domain, feel free to report it here.

As always, you’re more than welcome to contact me anytime on aleksandar.todorovic@mail.ru. I hope that you’ll continue to read me on my new address.

Sincerely,
Aleksandar Todorović

CodeCombat – The Most Fun Way To Learn New Programming Language

If you ever programmed in your life, you’ve probably realized that the process of learning a new programming language can become quite a boring thing to do. You already know how to program in X programming language, but you need to learn the syntax of Y language for yourself / for some new project / for some job you want to get? Well, believe it or not, there is a fun way to do that.

I was never a huge fan of video games, but I did like to play a game or two once every few days. I haven’t played a single game for months now. I consider playing games as a huge procrastination. One of the main reasons I switched to Linux (almost completely now) is because I wanted to be more productive, and one of the ways to be more productive is to limit your access to the things that make you procrastinate*.

But, there’s a certain game that got my attention. It’s called CodeCombat and the point of playing this game is to teach you the syntax of a programming language in a very fun way. It’s an open source project (and if you’ve been reading my blog you know how much am I obsessed by everything related to open source) and the game is not limited to one specific programming language. You can select which programming language you want to use. My choice for a new programming language was JavaScript. This is a pretty well done browser game, so you can start playing the game no matter what platform you’re using currently.

Now I’m not in any way suggesting that this is the best way to learn some programming language, but it pretty much is the most fun way of doing that. So, if you like playing computer games, but you think that you’re waisting your time by playing them instead of learning something, this game is pretty much the best of both worlds.

* DISCLAIMER: I’m not saying that gaming on Linux is not possible. I’m a huge fan of the way how Linux gaming is advancing in the last year or two. I’m just having a huge self control over it.