This tool will teach you programming (PERFECT for new/beginner programmers)

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:05]Hello everybody. Hello. Welcome to the video. If you could understand the at the beginning translate it and leave it in the comments below. Just do translation and then leave the the translation. The most accurate translation gets pinned, all right? And you get a heart as well. All right, congratulations. Hello. Good to see you all. It's been a little while. I got inspired by a game to make a video about this game and it's not sponsored. I just really like it and I think that for my community and my audience, I actually think it's going to be very useful. I think this is very useful, okay? So this video is to highlight a game called The Farmer Was Replaced. That's what I want to show you today.

[00:00:43]And why I think it's really important and why I want to make this video. So the first thing is as most of you know, I'm a game developer, worked on games and I also have done dev strings in the past and I get asked by a lot of people, how do I start with programming? Where do I learn it? What's the best language to learn? What course should I take?

[00:00:59]Etcetera, etc. And there are answers to these, right? Like you maybe there are some languages that are better to learn than others or or certain languages are more used in an industry than others and maybe it's better to do that blah blah blah or whatever is more efficient. But I would say at the very very very beginning, this is my answer to the question. It's all It's never an answer to the question, by the way. The answer to the question is always you just need to do programming. You just need to do it.

[00:01:24]Like you don't need to spend any time worrying about which programming language to use. You just need to use whatever you can to like get something going and spend your time doing it. And the idea is you develop an understanding for just generally how programming works and you you develop some kind of interest in it, right? That interest is the most important thing because that's the thing that's going to make you program again like the next day or a couple days from now. And that's the interest that interest is going to make you develop challenges for yourself and think of projects for yourself, right? That's the thing that's going to pull you through the journey of learning programming.

[00:01:59]It's going to be what makes you open another tab and Google to to search for a solution to a problem or to figure out an error message or something like that.

[00:02:07]And that's got nothing to do with a language. It's got nothing to do with a a course, right? You can go and do a university course like I did. And let me tell you now, the course could only get me so far. The interest in what I was doing and me playing with programming and having fun with it was by far the biggest key in ingredient to me getting anywhere at all. There are absolutely like objective answers to like what is the most efficient place to put your time, but none of it matters when you're spending your time thinking about what's efficient instead of just doing stuff, okay? And so, here's the answer. You want the answer? The farmer was replaced is the answer. If you're brand new, this is the answer. By the way, if you're an intermediate or professional programmer, this game is actually still really fun because it poses really good programming challenges and it's actually quite powerful. So, you can just crazy [ __ ] I'll I'll show a little bit of my stuff later.

[00:02:58]But, this this this video is more for like newer people because I think this is where the resource is most interesting. But, if you're experienced, you can maybe add on any of your feedback or something in the comments.

[00:03:09]Okay, so let's take a look at the game.

[00:03:10]So, you're brand new at the game.

[00:03:12]Right now, basically the point of the game is you're a drone. You've replaced the farmer. You're a little drone and um you plant your farm and then you harvest your farm and there's different kinds of things that you can plant. Now, I'm late in the game. I actually don't know how to restart the game.

[00:03:27]I don't want to risk losing my files or anything like that. So, my farm is really big, but normally your farm is actually really small.

[00:03:34]So, I'm going to simulate that the smaller size.

[00:03:39]Um I'll just do like do a flip.

[00:03:43]Right? So, I'll just do this. And then this is kind of like how big the farm is at first, right? This is kind of what it looks like. And so, basically what you do in the game is the game it's just basically a bunch of puzzles that you kind of need to do and you do it through programming and you just take it one step at a time. You go at your own pace.

[00:04:00]So, I will show you here like these are like all these different features of the game that you can learn and it's a lot, but you can't see this in the beginning. So, you don't have to worry about this. What you can see at the very beginning is like first program, right? Which is kind of yeah, here. So, it's like this thingy here, right? And this just explains very simply you don't need any other um knowledge of anything else. Of course, some knowledge will help, but even if you have nothing, this like walks you through everything and you just need to do things at your pace. So, this to explains to you that there's a text editor and here's a text editor. Um tells you how you can run your program.

[00:04:40]Um and it gives you some other things.

[00:04:43]Uh here's like some commands that are available to you right now and more commands will become available later.

[00:04:48]Explains that they're function calls.

[00:04:50]You'll learn more about them as you go.

[00:04:52]It explains that code is just a sequence of statements. You can run multiple statements in a row like this, harvest, do a flip, harvest, that kind of thing.

[00:05:00]So, for example, another function that I know um probably comes in the maybe getting started. Uh no. I'm not sure. Somewhere.

[00:05:10]It will probably explain that like moving is a thing. Um so, what I might do is just like move east uh and then we'll just do the harvest command.

[00:05:22]And then if I hit play, we can see that I'm just like moving and then I'm harvesting and I'm moving and I'm harvesting, right? So, that's just basically my my first little program.

[00:05:32]Now, uh obviously, how do we know what this while true thing is? How do we know move? Um the thing about the game is again, I don't remember >> [laughter] >> what was here at the very very very beginning, but again, it only shows you the stuff that you have access to in the beginning. So, you're not overwhelmed by all this stuff. So, in here, there's probably like a move um function here that was that this would probably be uh visible to you in the very beginning. So, it's like you type in move and a direction, and these are the directions.

[00:06:05]Um uh and then like some return stuff, some other information that you can refer to.

[00:06:10]And this idea of looking through documentation and understanding how a function works, you know, like what does a command do? Uh how do you how do you call it? How do you type it in? Uh this is all very much part of programming. This is a lot of time is spent on this when you get stuck on things or need to research ways to make things happen. You spend time looking through documentation. This is simulating that for you in a much more simple kind of fashion.

[00:06:36]Now, how do you unlock more stuff? Uh there's an unlock screen here, and in the beginning, you start with just this while, which is while loop. So, basically, all you can do is just It gives you a code sample right there.

[00:06:46]While true, harvest. So, you would just harvest the same spot over and over and over and over. And then eventually, you spend resources to unlock stuff. Uh so, you could spend some resources to unlock the ability to uh harvest grass or something like that or, you know, this increases the yield. Um you can increase the speed of your drone, the execution speed, uh so on and so forth. And you can see that the that the tree is, you know, kind of like this. And you you kind of just work your way through this tree. And then this tree kind of tells you what you want to work on. So, like uh your next unlock will require more hay.

[00:07:22]So, like like harvest the grass thing you need to make hay. Uh and then you'll get to a point where you can start making bushes, right? And then like you can plant the bushes, harvest the bushes, and that will get you wood. And then like something else is going to require wood to to unlock, and then you can do that. And so, in the on the on the left-hand side here, you can see that there's a bunch of resources. On the right-hand side, there's a bunch of like programming things. So, you can see that the programming is very, very, very simple at first.

[00:07:50]But, when you're ready, you can unlock operators. So, this is using math symbols, plus, minus, uh divide, things like that. So, you can unlock this. And if I right-click this, I'll get to the operators documentation.

[00:08:04]Right? And this explains what are operators. These things, comparison, uh Boolean, um which maybe if you're brand new, you don't know what these are yet, but I'm pretty sure this will explain um comparison operators, logic operators. Yeah, so like this will explain it all, basically. And so, step by step, when you're comfortable doing what you have, what you know, you can buy the next programming step.

[00:08:34]And then become comfortable with that.

[00:08:35]See if you can use it. See if you can use operators somehow. Can you use numbers in some way to change the way that you influenced your drone's behavior, right? And then you can buy uh senses with this here is something it can show you uh the drone's position. So, maybe knowing the drone's position can be helpful. Like, if I'm in uh position one, so maybe we can stop this here, and I'll say if uh get pause X is equal to two, uh plants, um uh entities. Let's just say bush.

[00:09:17]Let's just say bush.

[00:09:20]Again, it's been a while since I played.

[00:09:23]I think this will work. Maybe I'll do a if can harvest.

[00:09:28]Um harvest.

[00:09:32]I think this will sort of work. So, this will allow um Oh, if can harvest, harvest. Well, actually we'll do this instead.

[00:09:43]There.

[00:09:45]And then at the end we'll move east.

[00:09:54]It's certainly Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I I got this wrong.

[00:09:58]Whatever. I I'm I'm still building the plant there.

[00:10:02]Uh so yeah, so now I'm playing the bush there. I I derped. This should be a one for what I was intending to do.

[00:10:08]Um There we are.

[00:10:12]So now I'm planting like a bush here. So that that could be maybe useful. Maybe you want to do something like that, right? So now I'm making use of the the senses thing uh with get position X. Um yeah. So this is basically the thing.

[00:10:23]And and you can unlock variables and you maybe you have no idea what a variable is, but at this point you can right click it. It'll give you explanation of how what they are, how to use it, some example codes that you can take and test yourself. This kind of thing. This is the perfect playground to mess around with. One thing that I really like about this is you have very limited things to deal with at first, so you don't have to think about too much, right? Just get comfortable with what you know before you buy the next module, right? And then use that module, right? And then buy the next one, right? Not only that, but you get a real world example right here in the game, you know? You get this really, really tangible thing that you're modifying or that you're manipulating here, this drone, and you can see the outcome in real time. You can watch how it's running.

[00:11:08]You can see the code highlighting here, right?

[00:11:12]You can pause things even, go step by step.

[00:11:15]Make sure that you understand what's happening, right? This is really, really, really good. And you can do this elsewhere. This is not the only thing in the world that can do it, but it's just so accessible. Like you don't need a pro you don't need to be a programmer. You don't need a like a proper environment.

[00:11:28]You just need to get the game, and then you play the game, and you've got little puzzles for yourself. And yeah. So, where does the puzzle element kind of come from? So, you can get, you know, harvest different things, but okay, big deal. I can harvest one thing or another. Why why can that be interesting? How does that even change the game?

[00:11:46]Well, the the way it does it is as you um as you unlock new things, so for example, plants, not all um crops that you can plant have the same rules. So, this grass here just kind of grows automatically. But, the bush, however, uh so, grass is nice because it grows automatically. All other plants have to be planted first. So, now it's introducing the fact that, oh, after I harvest a bush, I have to plant another bush there. So, now you need to incorporate a new command, and it teaches you how to use that command um as well, right? So, okay, bushes are a little bit more complicated. And then you move on to like uh the next thing.

[00:12:27]Um let's see, carrots, for example. And it's like, okay, carrots, uh you can plant you have to plant the carrots like you did with the bushes. Um but then also, you need to till the the ground um to make sure that the ground is soil, and not um uh grassland. So, it here is saying, "This will change the ground to soil."

[00:12:48]"To till the soil, call the till command." So, again, now there's all these like extra rules that are being applied to uh a crop, and this is where the puzzle element comes in. And it becomes more and more complicated with the different uh crop types, and they become more and more challenging puzzles for you to solve. And there are so many ways to solve this. You can solve it really, really efficiently. You can do more in-depth, you know, hardcore programming approaches, or you could just brute-force your way through. It doesn't really matter. The important thing is you're programming, you're typing stuff in, you're you know, you're you're probably going to be making syn- syntax errors like you're going to try something like this, but like this needs to be tabbed in. If I try and run it, it's going to error. There isn't an indentation here. Now you need to start figuring out errors and how to solve them, another big part of programming.

[00:13:33]It gets you really, really familiar with all of these basic fundamentals, which are present in all programming things.

[00:13:41]So, I highly, highly recommend this game.

[00:13:44]Uh and I don't want to show too much more cuz I don't want to give away all the challenge for you, okay? Uh but what I'll do is I will show a little bit of just some more crazy kind of stuff. So, like this is this is all of like my code that I have and it's a little bit more gnarly. Um so, like um these are all separate code files and like I've just got like global stuff like dictionaries that I'm using for certain things.

[00:14:13]Um I've got like helper functions that I can use elsewhere. So, there's like a whole bunch of stuff here. And you don't have to go this gnarly, right? It's just like I I just kind of wanted to.

[00:14:23]Um uh by the way, this language the programming language in this game is very, very, very similar to Python. I mean, it's basically Python, but uh not exactly. There's some features of Python that it's missing.

[00:14:33]So, um if you ever want to know how to do something, like how to type a certain syntax in in this language, you could probably just Google how to do it on Python and see if it works, but there's a chance that it it it it won't. Uh I believe there's a document somewhere that outlines what what is missing in this. Um so, you can maybe Google that as well. But um yeah, so there's like other uh these are kind of like uh solutions that I have for different kinds of corrupt types and they get a bit crazy depending on how hard I wanted to go on stuff and how um I wanted to optimize them. So, let's let's take a look at some of it.

[00:15:09]Um yes, I have more.

[00:15:13]Okay, so let's take all this, bring it down here.

[00:15:16]Uh let's see here. The first one I want to show maybe I'll maybe I'll do the let's do pumpkins.

[00:15:25]Pumpkins take some time. I think what I'll do is I'll set the world size to be smaller just so just just for testing just for showcase purposes.

[00:15:35]This is a bit smaller.

[00:15:37]Okay, so now it's running my code for pumpkins and the way that the pumpkins work are basically you want to fill up as large of a square area with pumpkins as you possibly can but when they grow sometimes they die, right? And the dead ones stop the pumpkins from like connecting. They would otherwise they would connect and become a giant pumpkin and so you need to like plant all the pumpkins and then you need to clear out the dead ones and so I have some code that kind of does this.

[00:16:06]Um and so now my drone is cleaning up the dead pumpkins.

[00:16:26]Here we go.

[00:16:29]And then now that's done it's going to go check the dead pumpkins that it planted and see if there's any that are still dead cuz they can sometimes still die.

[00:16:37]And then if it's all good it'll become one big pumpkin and then we'll harvest that and then we'll start again.

[00:16:42]So there's that. There's the maze.

[00:16:50]Uh maze is another challenge and here I've got the ability to spawn multiple drones so I actually have drones that go and scout out different routes um and we need to find the treasure basically.

[00:17:04]So the drones are looking for the treasure in the maze.

[00:17:09]Here we are.

[00:17:10]So and then another thing maybe is polyculture. Polyculture is another kind of advanced thing where you're harvesting um kind of basic things, but you need to harvest them in you need to plant them and harvest them in specific locations, basically.

[00:17:28]Uh so that's what this is doing here.

[00:17:30]And then this uh sunflower section is a is a different thing entirely.

[00:17:34]Uh but this provides energy to to the rest of the drones, basically. So you can see this gets pretty gnarly, right?

[00:17:40]Uh and it might look overwhelming, but again, it's it's one step at a time and you don't have to get to the end. Again, if if you want to learn how to program, which is the whole point of this video, if you just want to learn, you don't have to finish this game, right? It's it's just getting you started, getting you doing stuff, getting used to typing things in, getting used to errors, getting used to trying to think in programming logic. Um and you'll make some headway uh just simply by playing this game. Uh I think it's a great foot in the door.

[00:18:08]Uh it's a great like litmus test for, you know, you might find like you might try this and you'll be like, "I don't really really don't like this." Uh and then maybe maybe you just don't like the task of programming. And hey, you answered the question for yourself. Um but it also might be a good opportunity for you to like connect with other people, try find some help, see if anyone can help you. And you know, if you start learning some stuff, you it might feel fun, right? And you get some wins, you get some progress. So yeah, that's basically all I wanted to show. Uh let me know what you thought about this. Bit of a left field video.

[00:18:39]I think it's a great game. I'll put a link to it in the description down below. I hope you're all having a great old time. Feel free to leave any feedback in the comments and I will see you whenever inspiration sparks for me to make another video. So take care, everybody. Catch you later. Bye.

[00:19:00]>> [music] [music] >> Mhm.

[00:19:13]Mhm.

[00:19:16]Mhm.