Back to the Future: How 80s Arcade Games Taught me Clojure
summary
Built several tiny 2D games to force real Clojure practice: an infinite runner (student vs exams), a two-button chicken-and-egg demo, a cow-and-apples prototype, a Pac‑man-like maze, and a snake that collects balanced parentheses. Uses play-clj to run on JVM, then experiments with wrapped Java libraries for the later games. Complements reading and about 100 exercises on the online Clojure practice site. Shows concrete diffs: how entities are maps, pure update functions, game loop init/update/redraw, and incremental feature additions.
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chapters (19)
- 0:00Start
- 5:33Why Was It Good To Develop a 2-D Game in Order To Be Introduced to Java
- 6:41Infinite Runner Game
- 8:31The Chicken and the Egg Games
- 9:03What Was So Hard about Developing a Game
- 9:21Immutability
- 11:35Understanding the 2d Game Structure
- 12:05Basic 2d Game Structure
- 12:39Game Logic
- 13:15The Game Loop
- 14:59Find a 2-D Game
- 19:43Functions as Values
- 20:37Remove Collected Object
- 21:24Update the Player Position
- 21:47Thread Macros
- 23:55Add a Feature
- 28:43Write a New Game
- 31:27Recap
- 32:44The 2d Game Structure
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