Mixing Martial Arts with Robots and Coding

So how does one mix martial arts with programming? It's simple: you take the general principles from one and apply them to the other. The general principle in question that is of particular interest to programmers is called the "coding kata." In martial arts, basic form is practiced over and over in simple, repetitive movements called katas. It's no wonder martial arts can appear as graceful as professional ballet and figure skating. This same principle of katas can be applied to coding and is especially useful when one is learning to program in a new language or learning the workings of an open source project.

And the robots come marching in . . . in the form of the renowned Robocode open source project, initiated by former IBM employee Matthew Nelson. With Robocode, one could code their own robots from less than a minute to days on end, depending upon the level of competitiveness the robot is intended to have. The premise for Robocode, inspired by Nelson, is that coding games in Java could be fun and efficient. Indeed, it wasn't - at least, not at first.

Two years ago, I wanted to join a Robocode competition but didn't know how to begin, since I was a Java newbie. If only I had learned about the coding kata back then, then perhaps I would have been able to code at least one simple robot. Indeed, this coding kata is a life-changer.

Luckily, I was given the chance to work on Robocode again this year. The best way to build a competitive robot is definitely to start from the basics, as the Karate Kid films show. I learned, to my surprise, that coding robots was not as difficult as I had made them out to be. It was fun learning bits and pieces of trigonometry all over again. What caught my attention was that robots are like little kids - they won't know when to get out of the way of other robots, just as little kids won't know to look left and right before crossing a street.

Overall, I feel good about the assignment (having implemented all behaviors; I just don't feel too good about the commenting) - it was a treat, in fact, and didn't feel like homework. Coding robots is fun, especially when you're learning from others as well, all practicing the same coding form in order to achieve greater things, such as competitive robots, later down the road.