[HN Gopher] Amazon's new role-playing game can help you build yo...
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       Amazon's new role-playing game can help you build your AWS skills
        
       Author : webmaven
       Score  : 51 points
       Date   : 2022-03-17 18:20 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.techradar.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.techradar.com)
        
       | throwawaythrow1 wrote:
       | When people say that monopolies stifle innovation, this should
       | surely be held up as the poster-child of that mantra.
       | 
       | Will this be a flash in the pan? Yes
       | 
       | Was this wasted money? Yes
       | 
       | Could, basically, any human have predicted this is a waste of
       | money? Yes
       | 
       | Could the combined cognitive and monetary resources invested in
       | this have been put to much better use elsewhere? Yes
       | 
       | Don't learn AWS this way, learn about general purpose components
       | and networking and then, if you want, learn the AWS API, it is
       | the ONLY part of AWS that matters.
        
         | scarface74 wrote:
         | Yes because the billions of VC money wasted every year where
         | only 1 out of 10 companies will be successful is better?
        
         | kube-system wrote:
         | Different people learn in different ways. And even failed
         | experiments are important for progress.
        
           | w-j-w wrote:
        
           | systemvoltage wrote:
           | I kind of wish this urban myth dies. There are more common
           | things amongst humans about learning than differences. By a
           | long shot.
           | 
           | Veritasium covered this in much greater detail but still
           | approachable by the laymen:
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhgwIhB58PA
           | 
           | It almost always shutsdown the discussion of improving or
           | criticizing learning methods. Because, there is this deus-ex-
           | machina of learning "Everyone is different" and therefore we
           | must not question, we must not contest, we must not improve.
           | 
           | Btw, this is also rampant in other dysfunctional fields such
           | as nutrition and product-reviews.
        
             | my_usernam3 wrote:
             | > Veritasium covered this in much greater detail
             | 
             | Big fan of the channel, however he also has another about p
             | hacking which I think applies to his evidence in this
             | video. I agree that people learn the same, but desire and
             | attention aren't discussed enough here. Sure if you force
             | people to try each different way of learning, they won't
             | actually have a "ideal way". However, I tend not to learn
             | if I don't enjoy the way the material is being presented.
             | You can't run a race if you never make it to the starting
             | line.
        
             | otterley wrote:
             | You're seriously going to base your conclusion on a Jay-
             | Leno-style "man on the street" YouTube video over the
             | deeply-researched, peer-reviewed academic literature based
             | on the painstaking efforts of trained education
             | researchers?
        
               | systemvoltage wrote:
               | Did you see the references on Veritasium video
               | description? If not, I'll list it out here:
               | 
               | References:
               | 
               | Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R.
               | (2008). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence.
               | Psychological science in the public interest, 9(3),
               | 105-119. -- https://ve42.co/Pashler2008
               | 
               | Willingham, D. T., Hughes, E. M., & Dobolyi, D. G.
               | (2015). The scientific status of learning styles
               | theories. Teaching of Psychology, 42(3), 266-271. --
               | https://ve42.co/Willingham
               | 
               | Massa, L. J., & Mayer, R. E. (2006). Testing the ATI
               | hypothesis: Should multimedia instruction accommodate
               | verbalizer-visualizer cognitive style?. Learning and
               | Individual Differences, 16(4), 321-335. --
               | https://ve42.co/Massa2006
               | 
               | Riener, C., & Willingham, D. (2010). The myth of learning
               | styles. Change: The magazine of higher learning, 42(5),
               | 32-35.-- https://ve42.co/Riener2010
               | 
               | Husmann, P. R., & O'Loughlin, V. D. (2019). Another nail
               | in the coffin for learning styles? Disparities among
               | undergraduate anatomy students' study strategies, class
               | performance, and reported VARK learning styles.
               | Anatomical sciences education, 12(1), 6-19. --
               | https://ve42.co/Husmann2019
               | 
               | Snider, V. E., & Roehl, R. (2007). Teachers' beliefs
               | about pedagogy and related issues. Psychology in the
               | Schools, 44, 873-886. doi:10.1002/pits.20272 --
               | https://ve42.co/Snider2007
               | 
               | Fleming, N., & Baume, D. (2006). Learning Styles Again:
               | VARKing up the right tree!. Educational developments,
               | 7(4), 4. -- https://ve42.co/Fleming2006
               | 
               | Rogowsky, B. A., Calhoun, B. M., & Tallal, P. (2015).
               | Matching learning style to instructional method: Effects
               | on comprehension. Journal of educational psychology,
               | 107(1), 64. -- https://ve42.co/Rogowskyetal
               | 
               | Coffield, Frank; Moseley, David; Hall, Elaine;
               | Ecclestone, Kathryn (2004). --
               | https://ve42.co/Coffield2004
               | 
               | Furey, W. (2020). THE STUBBORN MYTH OF LEARNING STYLES.
               | Education Next, 20(3), 8-13. -- https://ve42.co/Furey2020
               | 
               | Dunn, R., Beaudry, J. S., & Klavas, A. (2002). Survey of
               | research on learning styles. California Journal of
               | Science Education II (2). -- https://ve42.co/Dunn2002
        
               | otterley wrote:
               | Thanks for posting these! Clearly there is research
               | pointing in the opposite direction.
        
             | Bancakes wrote:
             | But people _do_ learn different. The proper way to learn is
             | to get a bachelors in your interest, and meet
             | professionals. Some people settle for books. Others -
             | videos.
        
         | cush wrote:
         | This is the kind of "VIM is the only IDE you need" gatekeeping
         | garbage mentality that pushes creative young people out of
         | tech.
        
         | motoxpro wrote:
         | You are misunderstanding what it means to have a LTV of >
         | $100,000. I don't know if you watched the video but you could
         | make that game in Unity/Unreal/etc super easy. They just
         | outsource the dev to some shop for a few million and if you get
         | ~1000 real customers you have made your money back.
         | 
         | Everyone that wants to learn by "general purpose components and
         | networking and then learn AWS API's" has already done that. How
         | do you expand past that?
         | 
         | Is a game the best way to do that? Who knows, but you have to
         | do something. As a sib comment said not everyone learns the way
         | youre saying (I definitely don't)
         | 
         | Source: back of the napkin calcs
         | https://askwonder.com/research/customer-acquisition-cost-cac...
        
       | politelemon wrote:
       | Alright I was slightly cynical going in, but this doesn't seem
       | too bad of a way to learn. Runs well in the browser, some clear
       | presentation, and I can see its appeal towards a younger crowd or
       | a crowd that's comfortable with gaming in general.
       | 
       | But mainly I like that their loading screen appears to use 'The
       | Internet' box from IT crowd.
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg
        
       | bikamonki wrote:
       | If you need to code a game to teach your users how to properly
       | use your products...
        
         | recursive wrote:
         | Who said they needed to?
        
       | jjice wrote:
       | Every time I see something like
       | 
       | > training to 29m people by 2025
       | 
       | I have to be skeptic at the quality of the training. I think
       | there are going to be 28.8m half baked educations from this. Not
       | saying this is necessarily a bad thing since not everyone needs
       | to be a great cloud engineer, but I feel like there will be a lot
       | of situations where 6 people are struggling through a problem
       | that one decently trained person could knock out without issue.
       | 
       | Not necessarily a criticism here, but more of a general anecdote
       | on education now that I think about it. The amount of classmates
       | I had in university that couldn't get something simple done,
       | despite having a solid four year CS education is unfortunate.
        
       | ctvo wrote:
       | AWS is the last company I want making a video game. These people
       | are not great at usability or thinking about the overall
       | experience, and no one needs this video game to have 99.9999
       | uptime, which is what they're better at.
       | 
       | I can't even imagine the horrific UI, overlapping nonsensical
       | quests or mechanics, etc. that's in this thing.
        
         | CactusOnFire wrote:
         | They already made an MMO about Colonization. I think it has
         | middle of the road reviews.
        
         | ctvo wrote:
         | This sword is excellent at killing rats.
         | 
         | But wait. This new sword was forged at the lord's yearly
         | reinvention festival, and can kill black rats better. If you
         | use it on a brown rat though, it'll stab you in eye instead.
         | It's magic.
        
       | haunter wrote:
       | Can't be worse than New World
        
       | mdaniel wrote:
       | Heh, I wonder if that's why they bought LumberYard (which I only
       | recently learned is now actually Open Source, Apache 2.0 & MIT:
       | https://github.com/o3de/o3de#readme )
        
       | cush wrote:
       | This is brilliant. This is the kind of creative marketing and
       | education we need to help close the tech skills gap. Kudos AWS
       | team!
        
       | AtlasBarfed wrote:
       | And yet... the API and Console remain egregiously flawed.
       | Horrible.
       | 
       | But I guess those are for locked-in customers, so no marketing
       | dollars for those.
        
         | biohax2015 wrote:
         | The cynicism on this forum is overwhelming.
        
           | olyjohn wrote:
           | It's from years and years of abuse by software vendors who
           | make promises they can't keep, and take your money anyways.
           | We're burnt out on this shit.
        
       | astlouis44 wrote:
       | Does anyone know if this is cloud-streamed, WASM, or do you
       | download a native binary to play it?
        
       | f0e4c2f7 wrote:
       | I was curious what it looked like.
       | 
       | https://youtube.com/watch?v=lcmVvIeiFGc
       | 
       | I love this idea, I think there is a lot of potential for
       | learning this way.
        
       | brushfoot wrote:
       | It's disappointing that the core gameplay is apparently 2D
       | diagram puzzles [1]. I was hoping for a 3D representation of AWS
       | with the player's actions manipulating resources like in
       | KubeCraftAdmin [2]. For example, build a building that represents
       | an S3 bucket.
       | 
       | That said, it's brilliant advertising. It could be a foot in the
       | door for AWS in more high school computer science curriculums.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcmVvIeiFGc
       | 
       | [2] https://eric-jadi.medium.com/minecraft-as-a-k8s-admin-
       | tool-c...
        
         | butz wrote:
         | That's a very approachable method even, especially younger
         | developers. Imagine their faces when one night a creeper blows
         | up whole infrastructure.
        
         | vegasje wrote:
         | If you play it, you'll see that the 2d diagrams are just intro
         | guides to each "mission". The actual gameplay has you launching
         | a pre-provisioned AWS Console in a separate tab and completing
         | set objectives.
        
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       (page generated 2022-03-17 23:01 UTC)