I think more people into LessWrong in high school—college should consider trying Battlecode. It’s somewhat similar to The Darwin Game which was pretty popular on here and I think generally the type of people who like LessWrong will both enjoy and be good at Battlecode. (edited to add: A short description of Battlecode is that you write a bot to beat other bots at a turn-based strategy game. Each unit executes its own code so communication/coordination is often one of the most interesting parts.)
I did it with friends for 6 years (junior year of high school—end of undergrad), and I think it at least helped me gain legible expertise in strategizing and coding quickly, but plausibly also helped me pick up skills in these areas as well as teamwork.
If any students are interested (I believe PhD students can qualify as well but may not be worth their time), there’s still 2⁄3 weeks left in this year’s game which is plenty of time. If you’re curious to learn more about my experiences with Battlecode, see the README and postmortem here.
Feel free to comment or DM me if you have any questions.
On the same line but more commercial is the game Screeps, which has both ongoing and seasonal servers run by the developers as well as private servers (you can run your own).
(epistemic status: exploratory)
I think more people into LessWrong in high school—college should consider trying Battlecode. It’s somewhat similar to The Darwin Game which was pretty popular on here and I think generally the type of people who like LessWrong will both enjoy and be good at Battlecode. (edited to add: A short description of Battlecode is that you write a bot to beat other bots at a turn-based strategy game. Each unit executes its own code so communication/coordination is often one of the most interesting parts.)
I did it with friends for 6 years (junior year of high school—end of undergrad), and I think it at least helped me gain legible expertise in strategizing and coding quickly, but plausibly also helped me pick up skills in these areas as well as teamwork.
If any students are interested (I believe PhD students can qualify as well but may not be worth their time), there’s still 2⁄3 weeks left in this year’s game which is plenty of time. If you’re curious to learn more about my experiences with Battlecode, see the README and postmortem here.
Feel free to comment or DM me if you have any questions.
On the same line but more commercial is the game Screeps, which has both ongoing and seasonal servers run by the developers as well as private servers (you can run your own).