A Web App to Help Users Understand How to Code

Abstract

With the continuous development of information technology, more and more people want to learn coding to solve problems in their work or study. However, coding often seems obscure to beginners, and many people give up halfway through. So people need a way to learn coding in a fun and easy way.

This project addresses this need by developing Coding Sky, a serious game-based web application consisting of three main components: a coding game developed by Unity, a JavaScript online editor based on Ace Editor, and a quiz system. Users can easily learn about coding in the game, then try to write and run real code in the online editor, and finally get feedback on their learning through a quiz. In addition, the application provides a downloadable stand-alone version of the coding game for different operation systems, so that users can learn coding without Internet access.

To verify that the application works as expected, the application was deployed on the AWS server and tested in different browsers on multiple devices running Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, or macOS systems, and the test results showed that the application runs smoothly and bug-free. In addition, several people who were just starting to learn coding were invited to participate in the evaluation of the project and gave lots of feedback, which also pointed the way to the further development of the project.