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Hiiiiiiii,
GitLab team member and author of the blog post here. Both excited and terrified to be on HN, honestly - what a honor!
* Totally agree that the Makefile was a high bar of entry right at the beginning. Since we're working with a single source file, I just opened an MR to update the blog post to compile it directly in the terminal [1]. Do you think this approach would make it more beginner-friendly?
* My fondness for C++ might've steered the direction of the project a bit! I considered a 2D platformer at first, but felt that I/o centric approach would be easier for a beginner. I could always rebuild the text adventure into a 2D platformer - would make for an interesting follow-up post. I hadn't thought of an ASCII crawler at all, so thank you for that idea!
* Lately, everyone's been using AI assisted code as a helping hand, especially in simpler projects like this one where it's likely to provide helpful suggestions. The integration was an attempt to, of course, promote our Code Suggestions feature ;), and also showcase how AI can function something like copy pasting code from a tutorial by providing you with code you can use.
* As for the complexity, I was debating between writing this for beginners vs an intermediate audience and asked myself things like "Can I assume that this person who knows what conditionals like while or for loops are?". After some peer reviews, it became a very introductory C++ lesson. Striking the right balance can be tricky. I'm hoping to get into more complex code in future parts, but first I really need to introduce functions because the code needs it haha.
Thanks for your valuable feedback and things to think on, super appreciated! :)
[1]https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/-/merge_request...